Green Bay Packers kicker Brandon McManus is struggling. Outside of the red zone this year, he’s just three of nine on field goals. His overall field goal percentage of just 64.7 percent is the worst in the NFL among qualifiers. Despite going 20 of 21 in 2024, his first year in Green Bay, McManus is now pacing to perform worse this year than the kicker he replaced last season in Brayden Narveson.
Despite all of that, the Packers don’t seem to be interested in making a kicker change. When head coach
Matt LaFleur talked to the press on Wednesday, the first time that he’s spoken to the media since the post-game presser on Monday, he was asked about a potential benching of McManus for Lucas Havrisik, who remains on the 53-man roster. His response? “No, we’re confident with Brandon.”
When the league-low field goal percentage was brought up, here’s what LaFleur stated:
“I know. I think some of those situations were, like the other one the other night, that’s a tough situation to be in. I would say the day-to-day that we experience and watch and evaluate across the street, so. We’re going to put more stock into the practice, and then, ultimately, you have to go out there and perform on gameday.”
We actually can get a good handle on the weighting of these kicks by looking at expected points added (EPA). This will take into account distance and weight attempts properly, instead of just going off of raw field goal percentage. In this way, the expected points for a 19-yard field goal (snapped from the one-yard line) isn’t treated the same as a 68-yard field goal (snapped from midfield).
So, how does McManus’s EPA rank in the NFL when you take into account the distances of his kicks this year? 38th out of 40 kickers who have attempted even a single kick in 2025.
Basically, an NFL-average kicker was expected to make 10 more points than McManus has this season, which is considerable when the Packers’ three losses this year have all come by three points. In each of those losses, McManus missed a kick that, at minimum, would have forced those games into overtime. In the tie to the Dallas Cowboys, he also had a missed PAT due to a block.
Only four other kickers in the NFL have been even as half as costly as McManus this season: Jake Moody, John Parker Romo, Blake Grupe and Joshua Karty. Moody was cut by the San Francisco 49ers in September before resurfacing with the Chicago Bears. Romo is currently on the street after being waived by the Atlanta Falcons. Karty, who did extremely well as a kickoff specialist this year, was benched last week in favor of Harrison Mevis.
So the only kicker in McManus’ ballpark who has held onto his job throughout the full 2025 season has been Blake Grupe of the New Orleans Saints. That’s not the position you want to find yourself in.
When asked about Joe Buck’s comments, following Buck’s statement on Monday Night Football that McManus told the broadcast crew that he was only “semi-healthy” for the first time in Week 10 following his quad injury against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 4, LaFleur was pressed about shutting down McManus until he’s healthy. Here’s what the coach had to say:
“It’s always a discussion. Our process is that you have to go through medical first and then the player has a say so in where he’s at. The conversations I’ve had with him have been positive, that ‘Hey, I’m ready to go.’ Obviously, then the performance aspect, in regards to how they perform at practice. He’s done well at practice, so that’s how I have to make a decision.”
The Packers are the only team in the NFL carrying two kickers on their 53-man roster. Personally, I’m not sure I would trust the kicker to admit whether he was injured or not, if his admission of being injured could end up costing him his job. Either way, Green Bay’s coaching staff has sworn for weeks that McManus is healthy, and has explained away his misses as just “kickers miss kicks.”
