The Buffalo Bills are entering the 2026 offseason focused on broader challenges beyond their kicker situation, partly because they anticipate the return of Tyler Bass from injury after he missed the entire 2025 season. During Bass’s absence, 41-year-old Matt Prater stepped in as the team’s kicker and earned considerable respect for his consistent performance throughout the year. A recently introduced analytic metric now sheds new light on just how important Prater’s contributions were for the Bills in 2025.
FanSided has unveiled a new statistic called Kick Value Added (KVA), designed to measure a kicker’s true impact by accounting for the difficulty and distance of each kick, rather than counting all made or missed kicks equally. According to Adam Fromel,
“The core idea is simple: Instead of treating all makes and misses equally, KVA measures how much value a kicker actually adds (or costs) relative to league expectations from the same distances across the field.”
KVA scores start at 0.0, representing league average, with positive numbers indicating added value and negative numbers reflecting underperformance.
Insights from KVA on Prater’s Performance
Based on the KVA rankings, Matt Prater placed 14th in the NFL with a score of 3.7485 in 2025. He missed only two field goal attempts and three extra points during the season. Most notably, Prater delivered in high-pressure moments, including a crucial 50-yard field goal to tie the Divisional Round game against the Denver Broncos, forcing overtime. Furthermore, he remained perfect in postseason play, converting all five field goal attempts and six extra point tries.
Prater’s season was, however, cut short by a thigh injury late in the year, leading to two missed games. His replacement, Michael Badgley, struggled during his brief stint, missing half of his four extra point attempts for Buffalo, including an unforced miss versus Cleveland and a blocked attempt against Philadelphia—one-point loss that highlighted the team’s kicker challenges. Badgley ranked 25th in the league with a KVA of -0.89, a figure that also incorporated his earlier time with the Indianapolis Colts.
Future of the Kicker Position for Buffalo Bills
It seems unlikely that Matt Prater will return to Buffalo for the 2026 season. General Manager Brandon Beane has expressed confidence that Tyler Bass will resume kicking duties once fully recovered from surgery last December. Though Bass’s health is not yet at 100%, he was already considered a long shot to be available for a potential Super Bowl run. Despite this, Prater’s role in stabilizing the Bills throughout the 2025 campaign remains undeniable.
Known for his reliability and experience, Prater previously held the NFL record for the longest field goal and came into the Bills’ roster following a meniscus tear during the 2024 season with the Arizona Cardinals. He has not confirmed whether he will pursue a 20th NFL season, having spent some of his off time coaching youth football before Buffalo called him up in September.
If Matt Prater returns to play next season, it will be largely because of the strong impression he made during his single season with the Bills, underlined by the new KVA measurements that quantify his value beyond traditional statistics.
