Watch enough NFL kickers and you start sorting them into two groups: the ones with a spectacular swing that fires twice a game, and the ones with a boring swing that fires the same way every time. Justin Tucker built a career on the second list — and that is exactly why he is worth breaking down for a high school kicker. There is nothing here you cannot copy.
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What the Film Shows: The Setup
Start before the ball, because that is where Tucker starts. His alignment is one of the most repeatable things you will ever see on film: the same distance behind the ball, the same angle to his aim line, the same slow first movement into his steps. Nothing about his approach changes from a 25-yarder to a 50-yarder — only the effort inside the swing does.
That is the first lesson, and it is a free one. Young kickers love to lengthen their approach for long kicks. He does not. The approach length is locked, which means the operation never has to wait on him and his body never has to re-learn a new run-up under pressure.
Body Posture Through Contact
The thing I want every kicker watching film to notice: his chest stays tall and his eyes stay on the ball through contact. There is no lunge, no leaning back, no head popping up early to watch the flight. The posture lets his hips come through the ball in a straight line, and the follow-through lands balanced — every single time.
Balance at the finish is the tell. If a kicker is finishing on one foot in the same spot kick after kick, his plant and swing are repeating. When you see a kicker finish falling sideways or spinning, you are watching a swing that changes. Tucker’s finish does not change.
The Three Takeaways a High School Kicker Can Copy
- Lock your steps and stop touching them. Pick an approach — two steps and a plant, or three — and keep it for an entire season, every distance. The consistency of his operation comes from that decision made once and never revisited.
- Keep your chest tall and swing through. The temptation on long kicks is to jump at the ball. Tall chest, hips through, foot through — the power comes from the leg speed, not from falling into the ball.
- Give every kick the same routine. Same walk back, same breath, same two looks at the uprights. His routine is not decoration; it is the machinery that makes the swing repeatable when the stadium is loud.
The routine point is the one I harp on with my own kickers, and I built a full guide around it in what to think about when kicking field goals. Watch his pre-kick rhythm in the clips above and count how identical it looks, kick after kick.
Why the Operation Makes Him Look Even Better
Form reviews usually stop at the leg, but Tucker’s game is an operation. Snap, hold, and kick arrive in a rhythm so clean that nothing about his timing changes with distance. That matters to you because it reframes practice: his swing is only as good as the thousand clean holds it grew up inside. If your high school operation is sloppy, your film will never show your real swing — fix the timing first.
This is also the broader lesson I make in why NFL kickers are so good: the pros are not doing secret technique. They are doing ordinary technique with extraordinary repeatability.
One more thing about range. People love the long warm-up kicks, and they are fun to watch — but the film habit I want you stealing is not the distance. It is that his mechanics at 65 yards look identical to his mechanics at 30. Range is a product of the same clean swing, just delivered with more speed.
The Self-Scoring Sheet for This Breakdown
Reading a form review is entertainment until you grade yourself against it. Take these five checks into your next session and score each one pass or fail, kick by kick. The point is not to pass them all — it is to know which one you fail.
- Approach length: same step count on your shortest and longest kick of the session. Watch the film, count the steps, be honest.
- First movement: does every rep start with the same slow step, or do some reps begin with a hitch?
- Contact posture: freeze the video at impact. Is your chest over the ball, or has it already started coming up?
- Finish: do you land balanced, in the same spot, and hold it? A walk-off finish is a fail even on a make.
- Routine: same walk back, same pause, same focus point, every rep including practice.
Score five kicks and you will usually find one item failing repeatedly. That is your training block for the week — one fault, one fix, charted. That is also how pros like this one stay sharp: not by overhauling the swing, but by keeping every one of those five items boring and green.
Where most high school kickers fail this list is the finish, and the second-most common is the routine. Both are fixable in a month of deliberate work, and neither requires a single extra yard of leg strength.
How to Use This Breakdown This Week
Film yourself on your next session from the same camera angle these reviews use — behind and slightly up the line. Then check three boxes: same approach every kick, chest tall through contact, finish balanced on the plant leg. Whatever fails, that is your week of work.
If you want the full swing picture in one place — the steps, the plant, the contact, and the mindset that ties them together — that is my book The Art of Kicking: find it on Amazon here. And for a longer look at what makes him special beyond the swing, read what makes Justin Tucker so good, plus my take on five reasons he is elite.
