Sixty-nine yards, and not a line of it in the record book
Raymond James Stadium, last play before the break. Harrison Butker put his foot through a 69-yard field goal in Tampa. The regular-season NFL record sits at 68. The Kansas City kicker just cleared it by a yard.
None of it counts. Preseason kicks stay off the official ledger, so the league will file this one under nothing at all, even though very few players have ever struck a ball that far in a live game. Butker gets the clip. Someone else keeps the record.
The Chiefs walked off 9-0 up. Two quarters, zero touchdowns from either side.
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Three from three, then the short one gets away
The 69-yarder was not the whole story. Butker had already gone through from 58 and from 45. Perfect first half, two of the three from beyond 45, which is exactly the stretch of the field where his consistency has been picked apart over the past couple of seasons.
Then the second half turned on him. He pushed the extra point after a Kansas City touchdown. In the fourth quarter he lined up a 43-yarder, his shortest look of the evening, and missed that too.
Tampa Bay won 16-15. Do the math on those two misses.
August scorelines lie, but range does not
Preseason exists to sort out roster spots 46 through 53 and get the timing right. Starters play a series and sit. A one-point loss in the third week of August tells you almost nothing about January.
Kickers are the exception to that. Leg strength does not care what month it is, and a head coach who has watched his guy connect from 69 yards will handle the last 40 seconds of a half completely differently from Week 1 onward. Andy Reid now has that number in his pocket. Whether the league ever acknowledges the kick that produced it is a separate argument.
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