The slate of games for Week 10 of the 2023 NFL looked a bit lackluster heading into the weekend. Some of the top teams in the league were on bye weeks, and there were more than a couple of games that featured two sub-.500 teams going head-to-head. But based on how things finished in both the early and late windows on Sunday, we may have had one of the more exciting weeks that we’ll have all season yesterday.
Kickers Decide More NFL Games Than Ever Before In Week 10
Five teams – Arizona, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston and Seattle – converted a game-winning field goal with no time remaining in Week 10, the most game-winning scores with no time remaining in regulation in a single week in NFL history.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) November 13, 2023
The kickers were the heroes. It started during the early slate of games, when the games between the Browns and Ravens and Texans and Bengals came down to the final moments. A missed extra point minutes earlier nearly ruined the day for Dustin Hopkins and the Browns, but his 40-yard hit as the clock expired gave Cleveland a huge divisional win over one of the top teams in the NFL. In the Texans game, CJ Stroud led Houston on yet another comeback drive, which ended with a Matt Ammendola 38-yard field goal for the victory.
The late window on Sunday featured four total games, and three of them had the same, last-second field goal fate. Each of the Lions, Seahawks, and Cardinals pulled out wins at the buzzer due to the legs of their kickers, making for one of the more exciting days, as a whole, that we’ve had so far this NFL season. It was such an anomaly, in fact, that Week 10 broke the record for most game-winning scores with no time in regulation in a single week in NFL history.
Texans Kicker Has Only Been On The Roster A Few Days
Texans are placing kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn on injured reserve due to his quad injury, sidelining him for a minimum of four games, per source. Now the newly-signed former Jet and Chief Matt Amendola – not RB Dare Ogunbowale, unfortunately – will kick Sunday vs. the Bengals.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) November 11, 2023
If anything, the results prove the importance of the kicker to a football team. We have already seen teams lose games this season due to their kickers missing game-winning attempts, and plenty of wins had the potential to be losses on Sunday had the legs not been true.
One of the biggest related stories of the day revolved around Ammendola of the Texans. While CJ Stroud was of course the hero, Ammendola should be praised, given that he was with the team for just a handful of days prior to Sunday, as he was brought in as an injury replacement when Houston’s starter suffered an ailment and was unable to go.
Ammendola’s first year in the league was 2021, and he has been a part of six different franchises already. This is his second stint with the Texans, and Sunday was the first time that he had kicked all season. Before Week 10, he had made 18 of his 26 career field goal attempts.
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