Field goal rates have been improving significantly over the last several decades. And while field goal success rate isn’t the best stat because it treats field goals of all distances equally, it’s remarkably consistent at the league level: the field goal success rate was between 84.0% and 84.7% over each of the last five years prior to 2019.

But this season, the league’s field goal rate has dropped significantly to 80.9%.  But what’s truly remarkable is what’s happening with the Titans.  The graph below shows the field goal success rate for every team in every year from 1974 (the year the goal posts were moved) to 2019.  See if you can spot the 2019 Titans.

Yes,, Cairo Santos (the team’s opening day kicker) and Ryan Succop (who replaced Santos) have been awful, going 5-for-15 on field goal attempts this year (former Bears goat Cody Parkey went 3/3 with a missed extra point during his brief stint).  Tennessee kickers have therefore hit on just 44.4% (8-of-18) of their attempts this year, in addition to an unsuccessful fake field goal attempt. Yes, the Titans have trotted their kicker out for a field goal attempt 19 times, and come away disappointed on 11 of those plays.

It is by far the worst rate in modern history.   How bad is a 44.4% success rate on field goals?  The last time the NFL overall made field goals on such a low rate was 1952.