The Buffalo Bills begin their 2026 offseason with much bigger issues than worrying about the kicker position. Of course, that’s in part because the team is banking on kicker Tyler Bass to return from injury after missing all of the 2025 season.
Matt Prater, at 41 years old, stepped in for Bass last season and earned the respect of Bills Mafia after putting together a steady season. Now, there’s a new metric to put that season into full perspective.
FanSided has introduced KVA, or Kick Value Added, which helps define just how impactful a kicker is for his team, weighing in the value of a made or missed kick based on its distance.
“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,” Adam Fromel explained. Scores begin at 0.0, the placeholder for league average, with positive scores indicating value added and negative scores showing the opposite.
Along with the introduction to the metric, Formal ranked every NFL kicker based on their KVA, proving in the process just how impactful Prater was for the Bills in 2025.
What KVA reveals about Matt Prater’s impact on the Bills
Prater checked in on the list at No. 14 with a 3.7485 KVA. Prater missed just two field goal attempts on the season and three extra points for the Bills in 2025.
Of course, Prater proved his value in the clutchest moment of the season, too, striking a 50-yard field goal at the end of regulation in the Divisional Round against the Denver Broncos to force overtime. Prater was perfect in the postseason overall, hitting all five of his field goals and all six of his point-after tries.
Still, Prater didn’t play the entire season, dealing with a thigh injury late in the year that forced him to miss two games. Michael Badgley stepped in for him and did not play particularly well in his brief opportunity.
Badgley missed half of his four extra points with Buffalo, one an unforced miss against Cleveland, another blocked against Philadelphia, a game the Bills lost by one point. Nonetheless, Badgley ranked as the league’s No. 25 kicker with a KVA of -0.89, which also factored in his brief time with the Indianapolis Colts earlier in the season.
It’s not likely Prater returns to Buffalo, as Brandon Beane has already said he expects Bass to be the kicker in 2026, though he isn’t 100% healthy just yet. Bass had surgery in December, but still would have been a long shot to kick in the Super Bowl had Buffalo reached the game and needed him.
Nonetheless, Prater played a pivotal role in keeping Buffalo on track throughout the season with his reliability. Fans would expect nothing less of the decorated kicker who once held the league’s record for longest field goal. That said, the 41-year-old was coming off a shortened season himself in 2024, having torn his meniscus with the Arizona Cardinals.
Prater hasn’t yet indicated if he intends to return for a 20th NFL season just yet. He was coaching youth football before the Bills gave him a call in September. If he does play next season, it’ll be in large part because of what he was able to accomplish in his lone season with the Bills.