On Tuesday, I explained the formula used in my system of grading field goal kickers, which is based on field goal success rate adjusted for distance and era.  Yesterday, I looked at the single-season leaders using that methodology. Today, we look at the best field goal kickers since 1960 on the career level.

And frankly, it’s not much of a question as to who is the best kicker ever. Until presented with evidence to the contrary, that honor belongs to Nick Lowery (you can tell him about that here). The table below shows the top field goal kickers ever; let’s walk through Lowery’s line as an example.

Lowery played from 1978 to 1996. The length of his average field goal attempt was 36.6 yards, and the length of his average made field goal was 34.8 yards. Lowery attempted 479 field goals in his career; based on the distance of those kicks and the era in which he played, we would expect an average kicker to have made about 337.6 of those attempts. Instead, Lowery made 383 of them, a whopping 45.4 field goals above expectation. Thought of another way, Lowery’s expected field goal rate was 70.5%, while his actual was 80.0%, so he was successful an extra 9.5% of the time he lined up to kick. That’s remarkable. In short, Lowery was the most valuable field goal kicker in NFL history.

• The rest of the top five is hardly surprising: it features Morten Andersen and his brother from another mother, Gary Anderson, along with Hall of Famer Jan Stenerud and Lions legend Jason Hanson.

• One blunder can certainly define a player’s career, but it isn’t fair in the case of Garo Yepremian. He’s top ten kicker of all time by this methodology.

• The greatest field goal kicker to ever miss two field goals in a Super Bowl, Adam Vinatieri, does not fare all that well in this system. What makes Vinatieri better than say, Sebastian Janikowski? The two are contemporaries, and while it’s easy to note that Vinatieri has a better field goal rate, consider the other data in the table: Janikowski’s average made kick is 37.0 yards, significantly higher than Vinatieri’s average (34.3). The same goes for average attempt (39.2 to 35.7). There’s not much of an era adjustment going on here, obviously, but longer kicks is why Jankowski’s been about 1.2% above average compared to Vinatieri’s 0.8% rate.

• Among active, young, kickers, two stand out: Baltimore’s Justin Tucker and Dallas’ Dan Bailey. Both are a whopping 7.0% above average, courtesy of 90% success rates compared to 83% expected rates.

As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments. Presumably your thoughts about how awesome Nick Lowery was.