Special teams are sure kicking up a fuss in the young 2025 NFL season.
There were four big blocked field goal attempts in Week 3 to go with four walk-off field goals, including one that sent the Broncos to their second straight loss despite Denver having never trailed in the fourth quarter of either game.
Two of the blocked field goals came in the same quarter of the same game against a kicker who had never been blocked before.
Three of the blocks came in the final two minutes, something that hadn’t happened in the NFL since at least 1990, and the four blocked field goal attempts in the fourth quarter marked the most on a single day since at least 1978.
The defining image of Week 3’s wackiness was Philadelphia’s 336-pound Jordan Davis rumbling 61 yards for a touchdown after blocking a 44-yard attempt by the Rams’ Joshua Karty on the final play of the game that would have won it for Los Angeles.
That gave the Eagles a 33-26 victory in a playoff rematch with L.A., which blew a 19-point second-half lead.
“I don’t know what mph I hit but I’m pretty sure it was something crazy,” Davis said.
Try 18.59 mph, the fastest by a player over 330 pounds since at least 2017, per Next Gen Stats.
Also, at 336 pounds, Davis is the heaviest player in league history to return a blocked kick 50 or more yards for a touchdown.
“A lot of people look at field goal blocking as just another play,” Davis said. “Just another down, put your hands up, get off the field, check a box. The way we talked about it on the sideline, we knew especially off his last kick, we knew his angle, we knew his launch point. We just hit the gap, put our hands up at the right time and I saw the ball on the ground at the right time.”
The Eagles blocked multiple field goals for the first time since Sept. 21, 1975, against the New York Giants.
Earlier in the fourth quarter, Karty, who had never had a field goal attempt blocked before, watched Jalen Carter block a 33-yard attempt that helped Philadelphia recover from a 26-7 deficit.
Shortly after Davis’ heroics, the Jets’ Will McDonald jumped over the Buccaneers’ snapper, blocked a 43-yard try by Chase McLaughlin and returned it 50 yards for a touchdown to give New York a 27-26 lead at Tampa Bay with 1:49 remaining.
Baker Mayfield led the Buccaneers down the field to set up McLaughlin’s 36-yarder that won the game as time expired.
Mayfield noted afterward that the victory was especially sweet because the Jets’ defensive coordinator, Steve Wilks, once cut him.
“I loved it,” said Mayfield, who joined Matt Ryan in 2016 as the only QBs since 1950 to lead lead fourth-quarter comebacks in the first three games of a season. “And also their D-coordinator was the one that cut me in Carolina. Lot of stuff was personal today.”
And chaotic.
In Cleveland, Shelby Harris blocked a 43-yard field-goal attempt by Green Bay’s Brandon McManus that would’ve given the Packers the lead with 21 seconds left. Greg Newsome II recovered at the 47, and Andre Szmyt kicked a 55-yard field goal as time expired to give the Browns a surprising 13-10 victory.
“Season 12 chapter 3 #browns#besthandsintheleague ” read Harris’ Instagram post after the game.
Since he entered the league in 2014, nobody has more than Shelby’s seven career blocked kicks — six field goals and an extra point.
Eddie Pineiro and Cameron Dicker also nailed game-winners on the final play Sunday as their teams remained unbeaten.
Pineiro’s 35-yarder gave the San Francisco 49ers a 16-15 win over the Arizona Cardinals, and Dicker’s 43-yarder capped the Chargers’ 23-20 comeback over the Broncos, who lost on a last-second field goal in Indianapolis in Week 2.
In neither game did the Broncos (1-2) trail in the fourth quarter, but they trudged off the field with the sting of defeat after watching their opponent nail a field goal with no time left.
“Well, it stinks,” Broncos quarterback Bo Nix said. “It definitely is not fun, it’s not enjoyable but all you can do is go to the next game. I’ve never been able to figure out how to go back and change anything yet. I’m still working on that, but the most important thing is we have the whole season ahead of us.
“Instead of going back and changing things, all we can do is move forward and change in them in the future and do things differently and find a way to not let these close games fall into another team’s hands.”
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With contributions from AP Sports Writer Dan Gelston in Philadelphia.
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