Breaking Down the Detroit Lions' Kicking Woes

The Detroit Lions placekicking situation is an ongoing nightmare. In Sunday's 17-14 home loss to the Buffalo Bills, that nightmare became all too real. 

Alex Henery missed not one, not two but three field goal attempts. Each was progressively wilder off target; his final attempt hooked so far to the left it appeared to be an amateur golfer teeing off on the first hole and playing his next shot from the fairway on 18. 

Henery expressed his disappointment in his performance after the game in his interview with reporters, which can be seen here on the Lions' official website. He stated "it's pretty obvious" who is at fault when missing three kicks. 

Something else is pretty obvious: Henery will not be employed much longer. 

"

Alex Henery misses a potential game-winning FG in Detroit. Henery is 0-3 today vs Bills.

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) October 5, 2014"

The only reason Henery was in Detroit in the first place was the abysmal failure of seventh-round rookie Nate Freese. As bad as Henery was, Freese was equally disappointing:

"

RT @MichaelDavSmith: All NFL kickers combined have missed 9 FGs of 40-49 yards this year. Detroit's Nate Freese has 4 of those 9 misses.

— Denny Kapp (@DennyKapp) September 21, 2014"

That tweet was from Week 3, before his ineptitude was able to really hurt the team. The hope was that going with the more seasoned Henery (in his fourth year in the NFL) would right the listing ship. Instead, it sunk down with the hearts and spirits of a dejected Ford Field crowd.

Lions kickers have missed more field goals than they've made so far. 

	Attempts	Conversions	Long
Freese	7	3	30
Henery	5	1	51

For a franchise with such a long, proud history of kicking excellence, this is a brutal blow. Detroit employed just two kickers from 1980-2012, Eddie Murray and Jason Hanson. 

Murray was good enough to land on the Pro Football Hall of Fame All-1980s second team. Hanson was even better in his two decades in Detroit.

The soft-spoken Hanson holds the NFL record for most field goals made beyond 50 yards, with 52. He ranks third in NFL history in points scored and field goals made, and retired as the 18th-most accurate field goal kicker in history. 

Maybe the situation surrounding his retirement has placed a curse on the franchise. As Dave Birkett of USA Today noted at the time: 

"

Hanson had originally told the Lions he wanted to play at least one more year, but the two sides were unable to come to a contract agreement and Hanson has said he does not want to play for another team.

The Lions made Hanson, 42, a take-it-or-leave-it offer earlier this month for around $1 million. Phil Dawson, 38 and coming off his first Pro Bowl, set the market for veteran kickers two weeks ago when he got a one-year free-agent deal from the San Francisco 49ers for $2.35 million.

"

Duane Burleson/Associated Press

Essentially, the Lions low-balled a franchise legend. Even though Hanson remains with the team in an advisory capacity, disrespecting the venerable veteran like that cannot engender positive karma.

His immediate replacement was another aged veteran, David Akers. The 38-year-old never recovered from hip issues which dogged his final year in San Francisco, where he missed almost a third of his attempts in a league where anything below 80 percent is unacceptable. 

As Falcons coach Mike Smith noted a few years ago to CBS, "If you can't make 80 to 85 percent, you're probably not going to be a kicker in the NFL."

Eighty percent is a pipe dream for these Lions. Even 50 percent accuracy would represent a major boost in production. Heck, 33 percent would have won the game against Buffalo.

Where can the Lions turn for help now? Detroit does have some options.

Back when they first worked out Henery, the Lions also brought in Garrett Hartley, who spent several seasons in New Orleans, for tryouts. 

He remains available. 

Jack Dempsey/Associated Press

So does 2013 Pro Bowler Matt Prater. The Denver Broncos cut him while he was three games into a four-game suspension for violating the league's substance-abuse policy. 

Prater is clearly a popular choice with the fans. He set the NFL record for longest field goal last year, nailing a 64-yarder. Interestingly, he's already been with Detroit in his career:

"

Worth mentioning again: Matt Prater began his NFL career with the #Lions as a camp body in 2006.

— Pride Of Detroit (@PrideOfDetroit) October 5, 2014"

Journeyman Jay Feely threw his own hat into the ring while vacationing in Michigan's Upper Peninsula:

"

Waiting for @Lions to call RT @mtaz23 My only question is.. What the hell is @jayfeely up to these days?

— Jay Feely (@jayfeely) October 5, 2014"

Feely kicked collegiately at Michigan, and he still has some juice in his 38-year-old leg. He made a 61-yarder for Arizona in 2012, and nailed 82 percent last year for the 10-win Cardinals. 

Here's how the top candidates fared in 2013:

	FG Att.	FG Made	Percentage	Long	Career %
Prater	26	25	96.2	64	81.6
Hartley	30	22	73.3	53	81.2
Feely	36	30	83.3	52	82.7

Then there's Hanson. He's now 44 and hasn't kicked competitively in almost two years. Still, he did make 32-of-36 in 2012, good for 88.9 percent. He was 2-of-3 from beyond 50 yards, and any Meatloaf fan can tell you two out of three ain't bad. 

Would he really come out of retirement? It can't hurt to ask. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the Lions kicking situation passed the desperation mark weeks ago. 

All statistical info and historical data is from Pro-Football-Reference.com.