Brute force is key to last-second blocked field goals

Walk-off blocked field goals like those by the Kansas City Chiefs and Green Bay Packers in the last two weeks are rare occurrences, but they're not as rare as you might think.

Going back to 2000, there have been 21 blocked field-goal attempts that would have tied or won the game in the final 10 seconds of regulation, based on records searches at TruMedia and Stathead. Twenty-three more happened in the last two minutes of regulation, excluding the final 10 seconds.

The Will Lutz kick the Chiefs blocked in Week 10 is tied for the shortest kick on the list at 35 yards. It is one of five kicks that had a probability of success greater than 80%, according to TruMedia. Six attempts were Hail Marys from 60 yards or more.

The kicks that were least likely to succeed, with probabilities under 30%, were Martin Gramatica's 62-yard attempt in 2003 for the Buccaneers (28.4%) and Sebastian Janikowski's 65-yard try in 2011 for the Raiders (28.8%).

Blocks account for just 4% of the outcomes of the 518 field-goal attempts in the last 10 seconds of regulation since 2000.

These game-deciding blocks tend to come in bunches: There were two in 2003, 2014, and 2019, and there were four in 2011.

This season's blocks have been important to the playoff races. The Chiefs maintained their perfect record when Leo Chenal redirected Lutz's kick. The Packers kept pace with the Lions and Vikings in the NFC North by pulling a potential loss to the Bears out of the fire on Sunday.

And this season's blocks in back-to-back weeks aren't unprecedented. Teams blocked potential game-tying or game-winning kicks in three consecutive weeks in December 2011, and all three games involved teams in the playoff chase.

In a Week 14 Cowboys-Giants matchup, New York's Jason Pierre-Paul blocked Dan Bailey's game-tying 47-yard attempt with 6 seconds left to even the division rivals' records at 7-6. TruMedia's data shows the kick had a 70% chance of success. The Giants ultimately finished 9-7 and won the NFC East while Dallas finished 8-8 and missed the postseason.

The Lions improved to 9-5 after Ndamukong Suh deflected Janikowski's 65-yard attempt in Week 15. Detroit finished 10-6 and earned a wild-card spot while the Raiders finished 8-8 and were edged out of the AFC West division title in a three-way tiebreaker.

The Raiders did manage to reverse fate the next weekend: Richard Seymour blocked the Chiefs' Ryan Succop from 49 yards with 5 seconds left to send the game into overtime. Janikowski made a 36-yarder on the first drive of OT to win.

The other observable trend among the blocks is that a defender rarely sweeps around the end to bat the football. Only three of the 21 were recorded by defensive backs coming around the edge. There's no analytics hack for this kind of play: 17 were accomplished by linemen making a brute-force push up the middle. They've been household names like Seymour, Suh, Calais Campbell, Maxx Crosby, and Chris Jones, as well as less acclaimed players like Sunday's Packers hero Karl Brooks, Treyvon Hester (2018 Eagles), and Ra'Shede Hageman (2014 Falcons). Chenal is the only linebacker to make a successful middle push.

Guy Spurrier is the features editor at theScore.