Nick Folk: The NFL’s Most Accurate Active Kicker, Still Going at 41
Three straight seasons leading the NFL in field goal percentage. A 58-yard career long. Twenty game-winning kicks. And in March 2026, a two-year contract with a new team – at age 41. Most kickers are long retired by now. Nick Folk is getting better.
From a Sixth-Round Pick to 1,826 Career Points
Folk was born November 5, 1984, in Sherman Oaks, California. His father Anton, an accountant born in Austria to Donauschwaben parents, raised Nick and his brothers as dual citizens of the United States and Germany. His mother Kathryn is a pediatrician. The family has more athletic DNA than most – younger brother Erik kicked for the University of Washington Huskies through 2011, and Gregory Folk played soccer at UCLA before spending time with the Los Angeles Galaxy.
Nick went to Arizona, earned first-team All-Pac-10 honors, and went into the 2007 NFL Draft without much fanfare. The Cowboys took him in the sixth round, 178th overall – the kind of pick that teams forget about by training camp. Dallas didn’t forget. He made the roster, and then had one of the strongest rookie seasons any kicker has produced in the modern era.
The Rookie Year Nobody Saw Coming
Twenty-six of 31 field goals made. All 53 extra points. A Cowboys single-season kicker record of 131 points. Pro Bowl selection – the first Cowboys rookie kicker to earn it. On a Monday night in early October, Folk hit a 53-yarder against the Buffalo Bills to win the game. NFC Special Teams Player of the Week. He was 22 years old.
In 2008 he made 91% of his kicks and went a perfect 42-for-42 on extra points. Then his hip started giving him trouble. The Cowboys’ medical staff diagnosed an issue in his flexor, treatment didn’t work, and after three seasons in Dallas, the relationship ended. He was waived in December 2009.
Seven Years in New York – and What He Built There
The Jets signed him in February 2010. He’d stay through 2016, play 104 games in his first stint, and leave as the franchise’s second all-time leading scorer with 729 points. Only Pat Leahy, who played 18 seasons and 260 games for the Jets, has scored more. Folk managed 729 in 104 games. That’s not a rate Leahy matched.
Week 5 of the 2010 season: Folk kicks five field goals in a Jets home win over Minnesota, the first Jets kicker to do that since Leahy in 1984. A week later, in Denver, he connects from 56 yards – a Jets franchise record at the time. The Broncos beat him to altitude; he beat them to the scoreboard.
January 8, 2011. AFC Wild Card. Jets trailing the Colts, three seconds left in the fourth quarter. Folk hits the field goal. Jets win. They’d go on to lose to Pittsburgh in the AFC Championship, but that kick in Indianapolis is the one that stays with Jets fans who watched it live. It’s hard to overstate how clean the moment was – no overtime, no controversy, just a kick from a kicker who didn’t miss when it mattered.
The consecutive field goals record is worth a specific mention: 23 straight made, a Jets franchise record. It eventually ended on a 48-yard miss against the Bills in 2013. Before that game, he’d made 23 in a row across situations, weather conditions, and distances that would have broken a less reliable kicker. His Jets career field goal percentage in that first stint was 82.2% – respectable, though not the elite number that came later.
Tampa Bay, the AAF, and a Comeback Nobody Expected
After the Jets released him in February 2017, the Buccaneers signed him in March. The season went sideways fast. Folk went on injured reserve in October after nine games. Tampa released him the following February.
He spent 2018 away from professional football entirely. Then, in early 2019, he signed with the Arizona Hotshots of the Alliance of American Football – a spring league that folded mid-season. The Hotshots suspended operations in April 2019. Folk had nowhere to go. He was 34, had missed more than a full season, and hadn’t played a meaningful NFL game since 2016.
The Patriots signed him in October 2019. This part of the story doesn’t get enough attention: Folk could have been done. Instead he walked into Foxborough, competed for a roster spot on one of the most demanding franchises in the league, and held on. By 2021 he co-led the entire NFL in scoring. At 36.
The Patriots Years – When He Became Something Different
From 2019 through 2022 with New England, Folk converted 89.3% of his field goal attempts and 91.3% of his extra points across 23 games. Nine kicks from 50-plus yards in his final two seasons there – after never making more than three from that range in any single year before. He finished top five in total field goal makes in both 2021 and 2022 despite the Patriots having an offense that rarely threatened the end zone in meaningful ways.
New England drafted Maryland kicker Chad Ryland in the fourth round of the 2023 draft. Folk was traded to Tennessee in August, in exchange for a 2025 seventh-round pick. The Patriots moved on. Folk went to Nashville and kept working.
Tennessee, 400 Career Field Goals, and One More Move
In the Titans’ 2023 season opener against the Saints, Folk went 5-for-5 on field goals. All five Titans points came from his foot. In Week 2 he hit a 41-yarder in overtime against the Chargers – named AFC Special Teams Player of the Week. He reached his 400th career field goal during a 2023 game against Washington, trimming the Commanders’ lead to 28-13. The Titans were down; the milestone barely registered in the box score.
In 2024 with Tennessee under special teams coordinator Craig Aukerman, Folk made 95.5% of his field goal attempts and was perfect on extra points. He was 39 years old and statistically more accurate than he’d been at 25.
Back to New York – Then One Last Chapter Starts in Atlanta
The Jets signed him on July 29, 2025. He was 40. Their offense finished with the fourth-lowest scoring output in the NFL that season, which meant Folk got fewer opportunities than almost any kicker in the league. He made 28 of 29 field goal attempts anyway. His only miss was a 55-yard try in Week 13 in wet, sloppy conditions. Three plays later in that same game, trailing with the clock running out, he hit a 56-yarder to beat the Falcons 27-24 as time expired. Seven field goals from 50-plus yards on the season – a career best. FG percentage: 96.6%, the best in the NFL.
He led the league in field goal percentage for the third consecutive season. Over those three years combined – 2023, 2024, 2025 – he went 78-for-81. That’s 96.3% across 81 attempts spanning three different teams, three different offensive environments, and three different coordinators. The number holds up from any angle you look at it.
On March 7, 2026, Folk entered free agency. Two days later, the Falcons signed him to a two-year deal. Atlanta had used three different kickers during the 2025 season and clearly wanted stability. The reunion with Aukerman – who’d been hired as the Falcons’ new special teams coordinator – gave the signing a logic beyond just credentials. Folk had already worked under him in Tennessee and produced the best accuracy of his career in that environment. Atlanta is betting the relationship travels.
Career Numbers, Stripped Down
Eighteen seasons. Five franchises – Dallas, the Jets, Tampa Bay, New England, Tennessee, then back to the Jets, then Atlanta. Through 2025: 431 field goals made on 507 attempts (85.0%), 533 extra points made on 550 attempts (96.9%), 1,826 career points. That’s 16th all-time in NFL scoring history – a list that is almost entirely quarterbacks, running backs, and wide receivers. Among kickers specifically, it’s a shorter list, and Folk is on it while still playing.
His career long is 58 yards, hit on September 29, 2025. His 20th career game-winning field goal came in Week 13 of that same season – the 56-yarder against the Falcons that barely cleared the left upright. He’s made 18 kicks from at least 50 yards over just the last three seasons, the most of any three-year stretch in his career. None of that appeared to be coming when he was playing for the Arizona Hotshots in a league that no longer exists.
Why the Late-Career Accuracy Surge Doesn’t Fully Add Up – and What That Means
Here’s what’s genuinely strange about Folk’s career arc: most kickers peak somewhere in their late 20s to mid-30s, then see accuracy erode as leg strength fades and the repetitions accumulate. Folk went the other direction. His best accuracy came at 39, 40, and 41. The Patriots years produced 89.3%. Tennessee pushed it to 95.5%. New York hit 96.6%. He’s converting at a rate now that he never approached as a young kicker in Dallas.
There’s no clean explanation for this. Better mechanics, perhaps – kickers do refine technique over decades in ways that can offset physical decline. The mental side of kicking, the elimination of hesitation, tends to sharpen with experience. He also credits his long snappers and holders, and he means it – a kicker’s accuracy is never entirely his own work. But the trend still doesn’t follow the normal aging curve. Most kickers don’t get dramatically more accurate in their fourth decade. Folk did.
Twenty Game-Winners – The Moments That Define the Career
The 2007 MNF kick against the Bills: 53 yards, Folk’s rookie season, the Cowboys win. The 2011 playoff kick in Indianapolis with three seconds left. The 2013 overtime win over the Patriots from 30 yards – Jets 30, Patriots 27. A 41-yard overtime make for the Titans in 2023 against the Chargers. And the 56-yarder against Atlanta in the rain in November 2025, Folk’s 20th career game-winner, the ball barely staying fair as it cleared the crossbar.
Twenty clutch kicks is the number that doesn’t show up in the standard stat line. Field goal percentage measures volume and accuracy. It doesn’t measure what happens when the kick is the game, when the margin is zero and the clock reads 0:00. Folk has been in that situation 20 times and converted. Some of those came against good teams in meaningful games. Some came in garbage seasons where the kick was the one thing that went right. All 20 counted the same.
Atlanta, 2026 – What the Falcons Are Getting
The Falcons had kicker problems throughout 2025. Three different players attempted field goals for them during the regular season. Craig Aukerman took over as special teams coordinator in the offseason and immediately went back to the kicker he already knew worked. Folk and Aukerman spent 2024 together in Tennessee. Folk made 95.5% of his kicks. Aukerman didn’t need to see more.
Atlanta’s offense should give Folk more volume than he saw with the Jets. The Jets finished 28th in scoring in 2025. If the Falcons are anywhere near average on that side of the ball, Folk will attempt more kicks and have more chances to add to his 1,826 points. He’s 41, entering his 19th NFL season, and signed through at least 2027. There’s nothing in his recent production that says this is a decline situation. The 96.6% from last season is the data point that matters most. Everything else is biography.
The Children’s Tumor Foundation and One Personal Detail
Folk’s cousin Blake Robinson was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis at 18 months old. Folk has partnered with the Children’s Tumor Foundation to support NF research, and he’s made it a consistent part of his charitable work – including a 2025 My Cause My Cleats campaign with the Jets. He’s an avid soccer fan, attends New York Red Bulls games when he’s in the area, and is a member of the Viking Army supporters club. He majored in marketing at Arizona and is a dual citizen of the United States and Germany through his father, who grew up there. These details don’t appear on the stat sheet. They’re the reason people who cover him consistently describe him as one of the better locker room presences in the league.
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