Eagles kicker Jake Elliott ‘extremely confident in myself’ after struggling during 2025 season
The Eagles have stood behind Elliott even as his numbers have declined over the past two seasons.
Eagles special teams coach Michael Clay doesn’t think Jake Elliott fell out of love with football, but he did see a kicker last season whose body language was that of a player who was being hard on himself.
It is an isolating position. The snap and hold need to go well, sure, but so much rests on the swing of an NFL kicker’s leg, and the precision with which his foot hits the ball, that when any decrease of their confidence level can lead to poor results.
Elliott, the team’s primary kicker since 2017, had one of his worst seasons in 2025. He went 20-for-27 on field goal attempts. That 74.1% conversion rate was his second-worst season-long performance, barely edging out his 73.7% (14-for-19) effort in 2020. Elliott converted 93.8% of his field goals in 2023, which included a 7-for-8 mark on kicks of 50-plus yards. But the two seasons that followed have not been particularly good. Elliott is 48-for-63 over his last two regular seasons, and that 76.2% clip rates as one of the worst marks for a primary kicker in the league.
Elliott may have lost confidence in himself, according to Clay, but the Eagles maintained confidence in their kicker. Elliott, 31, is the only kicker in camp and, barring an injury or the unforeseen, will enter his 10th NFL season as the team’s kicker.
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Asked Monday his reaction to the team sticking by him, Elliott said he loves playing for the Eagles and is happy to still be in Philadelphia, but ...
“You’re always competing,” he said. “There’s 32 of these jobs in the world, so you’re always competing with everybody.”
The competition is mostly with himself. Elliott said he took his normal approach to the offseason despite kicking through one of his worst seasons. He looked back at what happened in 2025 — “We played in a lot of really windy games last year,” he said — and tried to learn from it.
He spent his offseason here. The deep dive into 2025 results found issues with kicking in the wind, so Elliott would do his best to replicate the wind whenever he could. Lincoln Financial Field presents winds that tend to blow into the kicker and left to right, Elliott said, so if he could find that wind, he would. He kicked on high school fields that were particularly open and susceptible to higher winds. He kicked at Penn’s Franklin Field, where the wind swirls.
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Elliott showed up at training camp feeling good, and Clay said he noticed.
“You never want to see them kind of get out of sorts in terms of their body language,” Clay said last week. “So, for me and him to have our own personal talks, I think he’s done a really good job since then in terms of his body language, being better and not necessarily getting down on himself on things he can’t control. Control what you can control. If you’re able to be on top of that, there’s going to be things in life you can’t control. You’re not going to be able to control mother nature. You’re not going to be able to control the distance we put you out there.”
Elliott didn’t lose his love for football, he said Monday. It was a fair question considering Clay remarked in May that Elliott had to “fall in love with the game again,” but the crux of the coach’s comments were about Elliott finding his confidence again.
“A confident kicker is a dangerous kicker,” Clay said in May.
Said Elliott: “I’ve always loved the game. I always will love the game. I don’t think that’s necessarily in question. It’s just, how can you be better?”
That’s what the offseason was about, refining his contact and dialing in on his ball flight.
The result?
“I’m extremely confident in myself right now,” Elliott said. “I feel like I’ve had a great offseason, I’m putting together a good camp, I feel like I’m striking it best I have in a while. Every day is a new day. Just trying to build on it.”
The Eagles are grinding their way through the second week of training camp. Some parts of the team have looked good, others remain very much a work in progress. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jeff McLane and Jeff Neiburg assess quarterback Jalen Hurts’ play, how some of his targets are faring, and why, regardless of how the offense is coming together, the defense could be elite enough to help the Eagles contend for another title. Listen here.
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