Sixty-eight yards. That is where the record sits now — Cam Little, Jacksonville, November 2025, a kick that would have been science fiction when the position was young. A generation earlier, 63 yards was a wall that stood for almost three decades. The history of the longest field goals is really a history of technique: every time the record moved, something changed in how the swing was built.
The Record Board
Here are the kicks that moved the line, in order of how the record fell:
| Distance | Kicker | When | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 56 | Bert Rechichar | 1953 | Stood for nearly twenty years. |
| 63 | Tom Dempsey | 1970 | Square-toe, straight-on style — the last era before soccer-style took over. |
| 63 | Jason Elam | 1998 | First to tie Dempsey, from the soccer-style generation. |
| 63 | Sebastian Janikowski | 2011 | Same number, Monday night, decades later. |
| 64 | Matt Prater | 2013 | Broke a 43-year-old mark, in thin Mile High air in December cold. |
| 66 | Justin Tucker | 2021 | Clipped the crossbar and went through as time expired. |
| 65 | Brandon Aubrey | 2024 | The soccer-crossover specialist era arrives. |
| 68 | Cam Little | 2025 | The current record — indoors, and the newest chapter of the technique story. |
There is now a cluster just below the record line: 65-yarders from Aubrey and Chase McLaughlin, and a growing 63-yard club that includes Graham Gano, Brett Maher, Evan McPherson, and Joey Slye. Sixty-three used to be a once-in-a-generation event. Now it is a list.
Era 1: The Square-Toe Straight-On Swing
Dempsey’s record is the reason this list is a technique story. The straight-on approach with a square-toed shoe was the standard of its day, and it built range through a blunt, powerful contact — the foot arriving square into the ball like a hammer. It produced the greatest single leap in the record’s history, and it went extinct within a generation, because the soccer-style swing turned out to deliver the same power with a longer lever and a cleaner contact window.
That extinction is the most instructive part for a young kicker: nobody kicks straight-on at a high level anymore, and the reason is physics, not fashion. The inside-of-foot swing path adds control without giving up speed.
Era 2: The Soccer-Style Takeover
By the time Elam matched the number in 1998, the position had already converted. The soccer-style swing brought a different contact geometry — the instep striking through a longer arc — and with it, height that straight-on kickers could not generate. Height is what turns 63 yards from a prayer into a chartable kick, and once the flight existed, the record had room to grow.
I trace the whole migration in the history of kicking and punting, and it is the backdrop to everything else on this page.
Era 3: Altitude, Conditions and Timing
Prater’s 64 came at altitude, in December, which tells you something about the modern record: the deepest kicks now combine a trained swing with an engineered situation. Stadium, weather, ball, and operation all get optimized. That is not luck — it is the specialization of the position, the same trend I unpack in why NFL kickers are so good.
And the operation matters as much as the leg. By Tucker’s 66, the snap-hold-kick timing had become so clean that a kicker could commit fully to a maximum swing with total trust in the hold. Nobody makes a 66-yarder worried about the laces.
Era 4: The Specialist Generation
Aubrey and Little represent the newest layer: kickers who grew up with modern camps, modern film study, and in Aubrey’s case a professional soccer career before football. The technique is refined to a point where the miss window on a deep kick is narrower than it was a generation ago — which is why the attempts happen more often and the makes keep coming.
The equipment moved too. A K-ball rule change allowed game balls to be broken in before the kick, which was widely credited when Little hit a 70-yarder in preseason. The lesson for a high school kicker is not that you need new footballs. It is that every margin in this position — technique, operation, equipment, conditions — compounds.
What a Young Kicker Should Actually Take From This List
- Longevity outlasts the record kick. Andersen’s career is in the video above, and it is the better career model than any single bomb: same swing, two decades, week after week.
- Range is technique plus speed, not effort. Every era advanced by improving the swing, not by kicking harder. That is the training order I give every kicker I work with.
- Your own record book matters more than the NFL’s. Chart your makes by distance and conditions. That is the board you actually control this season.
Where the Next Record Comes From
Seventy is already a doorstep — Little has touched it in preseason, and the misses at that distance are no longer wild swings, they are near-makes. Whatever pushes it further will not be a stronger leg. It will be a cleaner contact window, a faster operation, and a smarter use of conditions, same as every jump before it.
That is the encouraging takeaway for a kicker reading this at the high school level: the technique you are drilling this week is the same technique the record book was written with. Go watch why NFL kickers are so good for the full picture of how the position evolved, and then chart your own longest make — that number is where your story starts.
