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Jake Bates nearly missed a PAT, and it sparked the best season ever by a Lions kicker
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- Jake Bates nearly missed a PAT, and it sparked the best season ever by a Lions kicker
Jake Bates won't say it all clicked, "because kicking's never going to click," he said Thursday.
But the first-year Detroit Lions kicker felt a sense a calm wash over him in mid-October when he tucked an extra point just inside the right upright early in the second quarter of the Lions' Week 6 win over the Dallas Cowboys .
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Bates had an inconsistent training camp and won the Lions' kicking job somewhat by default after Michael Badgley tore his hamstring in July. He made a game-winning 43-yard field goal in a preseason win over the Kansas City Chiefs and had one of the strongest legs in the league, but the Lions didn't allow him to try a kick longer than 35 yards in his first four games and he missed an extra point in a Week 3 win over the Arizona Cardinals .
Detroit Lions place kicker Jake Bates (39) attempts a field goal against Minnesota Vikings during the first half at Ford Field in Detroit on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025.
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Against the Cowboys, Bates barely made his first PAT of the game; the kick was close enough that one Cowboys defender waved his arms to signal "no good" as the ball sailed into the net behind the goal post.
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As he digested the near-miss and thought back on a few other close calls he had earlier in the season, Bates realized what he was doing wrong.
"I was just rushing my second step," he said Thursday. "And it's, I mean, there's so many things with kicking that's so nitpicky, and maybe that's not even what it was, but it made sense in my head. And so that's something that I've been working really hard on, just finishing each kick."
The Lions have a first-round bye after finishing the regular season 15-2 and will open the NFC playoffs next week against the lowest-seeded winner in the wild-card round.
Detroit Lions place kicker Jake Bates (39) takes the field for warm up before the game between Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings at Ford Field in Detroit on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025.
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They'll play at Ford Field against either the Los Angeles Rams , Minnesota Vikings , Green Bay Packers or Washington Commanders , and again the following week in the NFC championship game if they happen to win. And they enter the postseason for the first time under Dan Campbell with a kicking game that can be considered a strength.
Bates made 26 of 29 field goals this season including going 6-for-8 from at least 50 yards. He missed three field goals in the final six weeks — short from 65 yards outdoors at Soldier Field, wide left from 52 yards against the Buffalo Bills and wide right from 45 yards at home against the Chicago Bears — and two more extra points (including one that was blocked), but set a franchise record with 142 points scored.
"It's really cool," Bates said in a video conference Thursday. "I think more than anything though, it's really a big-time offensive stat because so many of those points are extra points and that only comes from scoring touchdowns. And then other than that, we've had a lot of times where, I mean, we're getting in field-goal range so often because the high power of our offense.
"So, I mean, it's a really cool award and obviously I guess it's my name attached to it, but there's so many people that make it happen that it doesn't matter how good of a kicker I could be or bad, but if our offense never gets us in that situation, that's not even a possibility."
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Bates said his transformation from UFL refugee to one of the most dangerous kickers in the NFL is due to many of the same people who helped etch his name in the record book.
Rookie long snapper Hogan Hatten has been near-perfect this year. Punter Jack Fox has worked hard to make "his hold(s) what I want," Bates said. And special teams coordinator Dave Fipp has infused him with confidence.
"I think there's so much to be said about the people around me that have helped so much with Fipp and Jack and Hogan, just kind of building that trust and knowing that ... when the ball gets snapped back to Jack, Jack's going to get it down cause he's a good holder, and sometimes that takes a long time to fully develop that trust," Bates said. "And I think I had a lot of growing to do mentally and physically, and I had to get ready for a stage that I hadn't been on. And so I think just calming down and being like, 'I belong here,' I think that that helped me a lot."
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Michigan Panthers kicker Jake Bates celebrates with teammates after kicking the winning 64-yard field goal with three seconds left on the clock to beat the St. Louis Battlehawks, 18-16, at Ford Field, March 30, 2024.
After signing with the Lions from the Michigan Panthers in June, Bates said he spent countless hours in Fipp's office "just talking about what went wrong, what went right, what does a kick look like when it's good, what does a kick look like when it's bad," and that's helped put him in the right frame of mind for games.
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"Just kind of being meticulous about the way I watch myself and how I approach each day and not letting one kick affect the next," he said. "I think there's been so much growth and it's so much due to the people around me that I have in my corner."
Whenever Bates lines up for his next field goal, it will be the most pressure-packed of his career.
In the playoffs, games are won and lost on the tiniest of mistakes, and Bates knows he has little room for error if the Lions are going to make the Super Bowl.
He kicked in one postseason game with the Panthers, when he made four first-quarter field goals to stake the Panthers to an early lead, then missed a kick and had another one blocked as the eventual champion Birmingham Stallions rallied for victory.
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Bates said that game is a constant reminder that "it doesn't matter how hot you're feeling that day, if you don't do what's right on every kick, you're going to miss."
Occasionally, he said, friends will fill up his group text with messages about how he could be a playoff hero in Detroit. He admitted he's thought about that possibility, too, but doesn't want to get to caught up thinking about the future when there's still work to be done in the present.
"Anytime that you're a part of a good team, you think you're going to be playing late into January and into February, so obviously those daydreams, I guess you could call it, have come and gone a little bit," he said. "But at the end of the day, just not letting any moment get bigger than it needs to be. A kick is a kick is a kick. So that's kind of, I do a little bit try to keep myself away from that to not let myself get anxious or think about something that's so far ahead."
Dave Birkett is the author of the new book, " Detroit Lions : An Illustrated Timeline."
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Contact him at dbirkett@freepress.com . Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions K Jake Bates big season sparked by near-miss on PAT
