Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor could've confined his praise to the postgame locker room celebration, when he shouted out Evan McPherson as "the best kicker on planet Earth" and gave him a game ball. Taylor could've written that off as a candid, one-off moment.
But nope. Taylor is as real and as consistent as they come. And after the Bengals' convincing 33-27 victory over the Bucs in Week 1, the coach's semi-private message matched what he gave to reporters in his press conference:
"Our special teams was really big with Evan. [He came] up big and in making those four field goals. He's the best kicker in the league. We're fortunate to have him."
Now is McPherson the best kicker in the sport? Not sure I'd go that far, but his trajectory and the in-house stats we have at our disposal point toward that type of rarefied air.
'Money Mac' was a top-five kicker in Kick Value Added during the preseason
FanSided's own Adam Fromal released his rankings of kickers from the NFL preseason, and Evan McPherson was top-five in the league. Haters at the time would've said that was an overreaction to McPherson's perfect 8-for-8 field goal performance and 7-for-7 effort on PATs.
Those numbers gave McPherson a Kick Value Added of 4.34. The KVA metric measures "how much value a kicker actually adds (or costs) relative to league expectations from the same distances across the field."
While "Money Mac" has had a bit of a roller-coaster career, he made a career-best 89% of his field goal tries last season. He was elite as a rookie when the Bengals ran to Super Bowl LVI.
It sure looks like McPherson is trending back toward that first-year-caliber performance. In Week 1, he knocked four field goals through the uprights, including clutch conversions from 55 and 58 yards out. He made all three of his PAT tries, too.
Look how high up the net McPherson's 55-yarder was. What a freaking rocket off that man's right leg!
Evan McPherson made it look easy 😌 pic.twitter.com/GU4pZASQnT
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) September 13, 2026
The KVA data is still yet to be revealed since Week 1 is still ongoing, yet the preseason data is nevertheless very validating. I have a feeling that McPherson is not only going to score very high, but also climb up the overall FanSided kicker rankings from the 12th slot.
If there's a hotter kicker in the sport, I haven't seen him. McPherson didn't seem to miss at all in training camp. If he did miss a single kick during that entire span, I never heard about it.
The smooth operation between McPherson. holder Ryan Rehkow and long snapper William Wagner does indeed give Cincinnati an "absolute weapon" to borrow more of Taylor's words from the locker room.
It must be a scary thought for the rest of the NFL that Joe Burrow and the offense barely need to cross midfield to almost guarantee points on a drive.
Combine that with a vastly improved, Dexter Lawrence-led defense, and this has the makings of a dominant Bengals squad in all three phases of the game thanks to McPherson anchoring the special teams unit so exceptionally.
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