The NFL decided to bring back lower-body pads starting next year. In 2013, players will be required to wear hip, thigh and knee pads. This used to be the case, but beginning in 1995, the NFL nixed the rule because many players weren't wearing them anyway, so I guess they figured why bother.
Roger Goddell's theory is that wearing lower-body pads will reduce player speed, thereby reducing, at least somewhat, the risk of concussion from players-turned-missiles. Who knows if lower-body pads will substantially slow the speed of the game, but players at least believe the pads make them slower because that's why they elect not to wear them in the first place.
Kickers are foremost among the anti-pads group, so they must believe that wearing hip, thigh and knee pads impedes their ability to kick field goals. If that's true, are we going to see a dip in field-goal accuracy beginning next year?
It's been 17 seasons without lower-body pads, so I compared the previous 17 seasons with lower-body pads for kickers. Maybe that's not a great way to compare, but I figured going 17 and 17 would give a relatively equal sample. And certainly better playing surfaces, better shoes, improved technique, no more Efren Herrera, those kinds of things that come with the progression of the sport are at play here too. So, this is hardly definitive. But it's at least interesting to note the percentages before and after pads.
| '78-94 | '95-11 | |
| Overall | 70.7 | 80.2 |
| 1-19 | 95.4 | 98.2 |
| 20-29 | 90.6 | 95.2 |
| 30-39 | 75.2 | 84.7 |
| 40-49 | 56.4 | 69.2 |
| 50+ | 38.1 | 53.7 |
Not only is the overall percentage up by nearly 10 percent, but long-distance kicking has seen a dramatic improvement. (Also, there were about 3,000 more field goals attempted in the latter range.) Obviously, it's impossible to know how many kickers wore lower-body pads pre-1995. Perhaps few did. But for a quick and dirty food-for-thought comparison, this will do.
All of which is simply to wonder if in the coming years kickers will become even more irrelevant to fantasy football. Or maybe it has the opposite effect by turning the current mid-tier kickers into lower-tier kickers, making the upper tier that much more valuable and worthy of something higher than simply last-round picks.