The Venn diagram of people that need Harrison Butker to screw up is an unlimited array of America. As Butker has kicked for the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs since 2017, he has been a vital piece of the franchise’s three Tremendous Bowl wins previously 5 years. A lot of the nation is sick of the Chiefs’ inevitability, and so the prospect of a Butker failure in a key second has been seductive for years. Think about the glory if he’d missed the 29-yard shortie that despatched final season’s Tremendous Bowl to additional time, the place the Chiefs gained.
Final spring, Butker gave a graduation speech at Benedictine School in Kansas. He revealed or closely implied a variety of boring, nonunique, and retrograde beliefs about ladies and homosexual individuals. There may be nothing particular occurring in Butker’s head, and most nonevangelicals disagree along with his worldview. Butker’s speech made him loads of new followers and loads of new haters. It additionally grew to become a mini-crisis for the general public relations individuals who characterize everybody from Travis Kelce to Taylor Swift to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. (Kelce and his brother Jason cut up the child by expressing broad disagreement with Butker’s content material however approval for the free trade of concepts.)
So, this season, there are extra individuals ready on an enormous Butker failure than have ever waited on a kicker’s downfall. Proper now, Butker is kind of doubtless essentially the most well-known that any kicker has ever been, owing to his time within the conservative media highlight, the Chiefs’ success, and his affordable proximity to Swift, whom he has most likely met two or 3 times. “Taylor Swift Goes Nuts After Harrison Butker Nails Recreation-Profitable Discipline Objective in Chiefs-Bengals Recreation,” one Sunday headline reads at Us. The headline building displays the assumption of the publication’s editors that each “Taylor Swift” and “Harrison Butker” are helpful names to position in a headline about an NFL sport’s conclusion.
I bear unlucky information for followers of different NFL groups, Swifties who resent their hero’s boyfriend’s teammate, and all social liberals with a passing curiosity within the NFL: Harrison Butker is rarely going to fuck this up. You’ll by no means get a second to rejoice karmic retribution towards him on the sector.
Certainly, the Chiefs have been in some bother at residence on Sunday towards the Cincinnati Bengals. They trailed by 2 and confronted fourth down and 16 yards at their very own 35-yard line within the final minute. However their issues ended the second an official threw a move interference flag towards the Bengals at Cincy’s 45-yard line. That left the Chiefs with a area aim that might be now not than 53 yards so long as the offense didn’t transfer backward. NFL kickers have gotten insanely good over the previous few years, however Butker has at all times been the most effective. There was little likelihood he was not flushing the now-piddly 51-yarder the Chiefs finally introduced to him. It could have been good from even deeper.
That is the chilly, unsettling fact: Butker was a extremely grating a part of the Chiefs earlier than he grew to become a public-facing bigot. This dude is a cyborg. He has been not removed from good on the whole. When the Chiefs have most desperately wanted him, he has been good.
Butker may have been the world’s most progressive advocate for ladies and LGBTQ+ individuals, and his shtick would have nonetheless been outdated years in the past. In Butker’s seven seasons as much as this one, he hit 89.1 p.c of his area objectives, third-best within the league amongst longtime regulars. He had a little bit of a hiccup in 2022, when he solely hit three of his seven tries from past 50 yards, however even that 12 months, he had the longest made kick within the league at 62 yards. Final 12 months Butker was 5-for-5 from 50-plus. Way more obnoxiously, Butker is 6-for-7 within the playoffs from that distance, exhibiting no indication that he will get much less icy because the going will get powerful. Butker did miss a 48-yard area aim within the third quarter of his first playoff sport, again in 2017, and the Chiefs went on to lose by a degree. However in do-or-die conditions since then, Butker has at all times accomplished.
Within the 2018 season’s playoffs, Butker flushed a 39-yarder with eight seconds left to power additional time towards the Tom Brady–led New England Patriots. (The Chiefs misplaced in additional time.) In 2021, Butker hit from 49 in frigid climate to ship that iconic Chiefs–Buffalo Payments playoff sport to additional time. In final 12 months’s Tremendous Bowl, Butker made a 57-yarder and likewise did his job on three chip pictures, together with one on the final down of regulation to ship the sport to additional time. He’s had occasional misses, together with one within the 2022 season’s Tremendous Bowl, however the issue is that Butker’s misses solely come when the Chiefs don’t really want him to make it. These are arguably much more unbearable, as a result of then Patrick Mahomes rides to the rescue and the Chiefs tackle an excellent starker feeling of unbeatability within the aftermath.
Butker will miss extra kicks—doubtless about one in each 10 he takes. Some will even be large ones within the last moments of video games. In 2022, he pushed a 51-yarder huge proper that might’ve delivered a win towards the Houston Texans.
However his subsequent actually crippling miss would be the literal first of his skilled profession. That Texans miss was in an almost meaningless late–common season sport, and the Chiefs’ offense responded by scoring a landing to win the sport in additional time. By way of some work of his personal and a few of his crew, Butker has turn out to be a Teflon kicker. He’s a star even in a world of ever-escalating kicker effectivity, and he’s on a roster with Mahomes, the final word get-out-of-jail-free card for his teammates. This implies he will get numerous possibilities to make season-defining kicks, and within the vanishingly uncommon circumstances when he misses them, it doesn’t matter.
None of this makes it unsuitable to interact in liberal fantasizing about Butker’s comeuppance. Enterprising opponents of his may take lively measures, actually, to make him uncomfortable. (Faux right here that an enormous chunk of NFL workers and followers don’t agree with Butker’s worldview.) An opposing coach may name timeout earlier than an enormous Butker kick and ask a bunch of feminine trainers—out of the home and being paid to work on a Sunday, reasonably than at residence rearing young children—to move out water bottles. The video board operators in a street stadium may flash an image of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Butker traces up a game-tying sweep of his leg. The choices for psychological subterfuge are various.
Regrettably, the explanation anybody cares about what Butker says is the explanation he’ll by no means provide you with what you crave. A lot of notable businessmen and politicians within the Kansas Metropolis space may give a wicked graduation deal with at a conservative faculty. Only a few NFL kickers are adequate at their very own job to take talking slots away from these individuals. This one is.