As I’ve detailed before, competition for kicking spots has never been more fierce, and you’re only as good as your last game. Mevis was 17/20 for his (short) career before last night, a league average 85%.
Contrast that with 1972, the last year before they moved the posts back to the end line: overall averages were 61%, and 5 teams were 50% or below, with the Colts trailing at an absymal 33%. Yet they hung onto their kicker, Jim O’Brien, he who had the winning kick in Super Bowl V vs. the Cowboys, all season long. The Aints had 3 guys @ 44%, having let Tom Dempsey go a season earlier, who had a howitzer for a leg but often didn’t know where it was going. DC had Curt Knight, 47%, who led the league the previous year with 29 out of 49, but they hung onto him through Super Bowl VII, which they lost (he missed ALL EIGHT that he attempted that postseason, an astonishing thing for a SB contender).
There are TENS of THOUSANDS of kickers now much better than any of those guys, many in high school. I can only conclude that an NFL team simply didn’t have anything near the pool of guys they have now to pick and choose from, and that they simply didn’t prioritize kicking like they do now, which is amazing when you think about it, that they would neglect a key component of winning to that extent for as many years as they did.