Saints kicker Wil Lutz almost made NFL history on Sunday, but he ended missing out on it by about two inches. Those two inches allowed the Minnesota Vikings to escape London with a 28-25 win over New Orleans.
With two seconds left to play, Lutz had the chance to tie the game by hitting a career-long 61-yard field goal, and in what might go down as one of the most dramatic field goal attempts of 2022, the kick was a double-doink: It ended up hitting the left upright before careening off the crossbar and falling back to the field for a miss.
In the video below, you can see Lutz’s dramatic attempt.
To give you a better idea of how close Lutz came to missing the kick, here’s a closer look at the double-doink.
And when we say this kick missed by two inches, we mean that it missed by two inches.
If the kick had just gone an inch or two more inside, the ball would have likely bounced in after hitting the upright, but instead, the ball bounced out, which gave the Vikings the win.
The craziest thing about the kick is that if Lutz had made it, he would have become the first kicker in NFL history to hit two field goals of 60 yards or more in the game game. Less than 110 seconds before his 61-yard miss, the Saints sent Lutz out for a 60-yard attempt to tie the game at 22.
At the point in the game, the Saints were facing a fourth-and-9 from the Minnesota’s 42-yard line, so coach Dennis Allen basically had two options: He could try to convert the fourth down or he could send out Lutz for a 60-yard field goal attempt. Allen went with option two and Lutz made his coach look absolutely brilliant by drilling the 60-yard kick.
Although Lutz didn’t get to make NFL history, he did become the first kicker on the 2022 season to make a field goal of 60 yards or longer. Lutz scored a total of five points in the Saints’ dramatic loss.
