Not every NFL kicker is built like a highlight reel. Some win games for a decade by being the most predictable swing in the building — and when I put Jason Myers in front of a young kicker, that is the exact lesson I want him walking away with. Setup the same, steps the same, finish the same. Maximum is a talent problem; consistency is a habit problem, and habits you can build.
His Setup Is the Whole Story
Start with what his pre-kick routine shows on film. The walk back, the pause, the reset of his eyes to the aim line — every rep gets the same script. There is no improvising, no extra look, no rushed approach when the clock is bleeding down. To me that rhythm is the most coachable thing about him, because a high school kicker can build an identical script this week at practice without buying anything or adding a single yard of range.
Count his steps from the tape: the same approach, the same cadence, whether the kick is short or long. The effort inside the swing is what changes. That split — constant geometry, variable energy — is what keeps his ball flight predictable.
Contact and Body Line
Through the ball, the things I look for are all there: a plant foot that lands stable and slightly ahead of the ball, a chest that stays over the ball instead of leaning back, and a leg path that comes through clean and inside-out. Nothing dramatic. The swing does not waste movement anywhere, which is why the flight does not wobble the way it does on kickers who swing at maximum violence.
His follow-through is the part I make my kickers watch twice. He finishes tall, on a balanced plant leg, holding the finish long enough that you can actually see the swing path he just produced. If you cannot hold your finish, your body was doing something different than you intended at contact.
What “Consistency Over Maximum” Actually Buys You
Here is the tradeoff I want you thinking about. A max-effort swing buys highlight distance and pays for it with a bigger miss window. A controlled swing gives up a little ceiling and shrinks the miss window dramatically. At the pro level, where every kick gets charted and every miss gets a news cycle, the controlled swing is the career move.
For you, that trade shows up in your charting. Look at your last session: if your makes cluster in a tidy band and your misses stay inside a narrow arc, you are building the right thing. If your makes are everywhere and your misses are long, your swing is shopping for power it cannot deliver yet. That is the diagnostic I run in consistency for field goals made simple — chart the window, not the best kick.
Three Things to Steal From His Film
- A written pre-kick script. Same steps back, same breath, same focus point. Write it down, then stop negotiating with it mid-season.
- Effort dial, not length dial. For range, speed the swing up — never stretch your approach. His tape is the proof this works at the highest level.
- Hold the finish. Add a one-second finish hold to every practice rep. If you fall out of it, the kick told you something.
The point about approach discipline connects to something bigger I cover in the differences between NFL kickers and everyone else — the gap is mostly not athleticism. It is the elimination of variance, rep after rep.
The 80 Percent Session, Written Down
Since this breakdown keeps coming back to controlled effort, here is the session that teaches it. Run it once this week and compare the chart to your normal session.
- Warm-up block: net or short kicks only. No charting. Your job is rhythm, not results.
- Control block: twenty kicks inside 40 yards at a deliberate eighty percent swing. Chart makes, misses, and — this is the point — the miss arc.
- Comparison block: ten kicks at full effort from the same distances. Chart the same three numbers.
- Finish: five kicks at eighty percent again. If your contact is cleaner in the last block than the third, the lesson landed.
Most kickers discover their eighty percent swing is their best one, and that their “full effort” swing was really a slightly disorganized one. That is not a criticism — it is the discovery that starts a career, because from that session on you know exactly which dial actually moves your accuracy.
Keep the eighty percent swing in your pocket for game day too. On a routine field goal, control is the default; you open the throttle only when the distance or the situation truly asks for it. That is the same decision tree every specialist with a long career ends up living by.
How Myers Compares to the Big-Leg Archetypes
Put his film next to the biggest legs in the league and the contrast teaches as much as either film alone. The power kickers swing with more speed and carry more risk in their contact window; the consistent kickers swing with less waste and fewer surprises. Neither is wrong. But ask yourself what your job actually requires: if your team needs you to make everything inside 40 and steal a couple beyond, the controlled swing is the one your coach trusts at the end of the game.
So here is your assignment: take your next session, chart two numbers — your longest make and the width of your miss arc — and then re-run the session at eighty percent effort. Watch what happens to that miss window. Then go read my Justin Tucker form breakdown next, because it is the other side of this same lesson, and together the two films tell you most of what you need about building a professional swing.
