When it comes to NFL placekickers these days, 40 may be the new 25. Nick Folk, 40 years old and in his second incarnation as the Jets' kicker, has had the most accurate field goal instep in the league lately — he's converted an unconscious 96.4% of all his FG attempts since 2023. That includes 3 of 3 in the first two games this season, and that includes a pair of 51-yarders, against Pittsburgh and Buffalo, to extend his franchise record to 20 FGs of 50-plus yards.

And in another sense, 25 and up may well be the new 60, since field goals of at least 60 yards have become all the rage, some from the older guys like Chris Boswell, 34, who drilled his 60-yarder in the final two minutes for the Steelers' winning score over the Jets in the Sept. 7 opener.

"You're going to see a lot more long field goals made, and I mean long, like 60-plus," Folk sagely predicted in a recent locker room interview with newyorkjets.com senior reporter Eric Allen. "A, the kickers are good enough now. B, points are at a premium, so I think coaches are more willing to kick longer field goals."

Folk then provided Point C for the increase in ICBFGs (intercontinental ballistic field goals), which we'll get to shortly. But while Folk has never converted from longer than 56 yards in his outstanding career, don't count him out of the swinging Sixties soiree. He explained why with some nuggets of knowledge he's acquired over his 18 NFL seasons.

Pregame Can Predict the Future
"Being a little bit older now, I'm not going to kick a million footballs," he said of his pregame routine. "And I've played in MetLife Stadium so much that I know, from where it hits the net or someone catches it, where I'm good from. So even if I go, let's say, from 58, I hit it clean and I watch it go through, I know I'm good from 62,

"That's why I think it's funny when you hear reporters say, 'Yeah, I watched him make it from 58 pregame.' They probably know I can hit it a lot farther — pregame is much different than when you get in a game. You're getting a couple of extra yards just from adrenaline alone."

And then there's that Point C mentioned above. NFL kickers forever, it seems, have kicked footballs they're familiar with during games. Folk noted that there's a new procedure this season that will produce some longer attempts and conversions. And for that, he provided fans with a short "K-ball" history lesson.

"When I first got in a long time ago, they used to have one equipment guy who would have a brush and a wet towel," he recalled. "Your team and the other team would send in one guy [to the officials' room] and each of them would break in three different balls on Sunday morning. We said, hey, if it's going to be a good day, break in Ball 1 for 15 minutes really good, Ball 2 do about 10, Ball 3 about five. You would never get to hit Ball 3 in a game unless the weather was going to be bad."

Breaking In Some New Rules
The procedure was modified to an hour of break-in time — "They would go in there and do a lot of work," Folk said, "and most guys would come out sweaty and their hands were pink from the ball" — then again in the past few years when NFL equipment teams could work on those game balls back in their own locker rooms.

Lately the league has allowed kickers even more leeway:

"Before, it was one ball per game, so the ball for Week 1 was only for Week 1," Folk said. "When I first got in, they'd have a 'K' [on the ball] and then a 'W' for, like, Week 17. They would mark them like that. You knew what the ball was and what week it was for.

"Now you see on the side panel a Jets logo, and what I remember is they give you 60 balls to work in throughout the course of the year. That's three balls per game for a 20-game season. You're able to use one ball in three different games. The refs mark them and then they take notes."

Professor Folk then explored the sports physics involved. He likened kicking a fully broken-in football in three games of one's choosing to breaking in that baseball glove off the rack of your favorite sporting-goods store just the way you like it, and to a slo-mo video of a golfball's distortion as it's struck by a driver.

The Password Is Decompression
"It's the same thing when you kick a football," he said. "Your foot decompresses the ball and it launches. If you can't decompress the leather, you're just hitting a hard rock. But if you can decompress the leather you get all the molecules in there to fire and then it launches farther off your foot."

Maybe 5 to 7 yards farther per kick? "Probably more than that, I'd say."

Folk Hero used to be the Jets' distance king — he set the overall FG distance mark from 56 yards at Denver in 2010, but that was ultimately surpassed by another semi-old-timer, Greg Zuerlein, then 34, with his 60-yarder at Minnesota in 2022. Folk's 55-yarder vs. Buffalo in 2014 tied the home distance mark, which was eventually eclipsed by a young whippersnapper in Anders Carlson, 26, from 58 yards vs. Indianapolis at MetLife last season.

League-wide, the number of 60s has exploded. Of the 43 FGs of 60-plus yards, 39 have been struck since 2006, and 21 of those since 2020. Already this season, Boswell and the Cowboys' Brandon Aubrey, from 64 yards out to beat the Giants in overtime, have turned 60s.

And Folk is back in the long game if called on. While there's no way to predict when an opportunity for a Jets-record-setting field goal of 61 yards or more will arise, he is already monitoring the weather forecast for Tampa, where the Jets play the Buccaneers on Sunday. And if he gets a chance to launch one of his favorite balls toward the Raymond James Stadium goalposts from that distance in possible 90-degree heat, converting could be as easy as A-B-C.