The Chiefs kicker scored the last 18 points of the game by himself.
For all of the Kansas City Chiefs players who came up with big performances on a day in which the team (finally) claimed their postseason berth for the 2023 season, it was kicker Harrison Butker who stood the tallest from a memorable Week 17 win over the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Chiefs came into Sunday afternoon in a fairly desperate state after having lost three of their last four games (and four of their last six). They'd already lost any chance at the top seed, and any momentum was slipping away following an embarrassing performance against the Las Vegas Raiders on Christmas Day.
Fortunately,. the offense looked quite a bit better against the Bengals on Sunday, who got out to an early lead on the road at Arrowhead but ultimately gave it up to the steady work of Butker and a Chiefs defense who put the clamps on Cincinnati's offense at the end. The result was a 25-17 win for the home team and their eighth consecutive AFC West title.
As for Butker, it takes a big night for a kicker to stand out above the rest, but a career performance will do just that. Butker scored 19 points for the Chiefs on Sunday and converted six of six field goals for a perfect evening in which the Chiefs relied on his rare combination of accuracy and power again and again to salvage drives that were stalled—whether in the red zone or not.
Butker came into the game with career highs of 18 points in a game and 5 field goals in a single game, but both personal records were broken against the Bengals. Butker's previous high of 5 field goals had occurred four other times in his career.
Coming into the game, Butker was already having a Pro Bowl-caliber season with 25 makes in 27 attempts on the year—good for an astonishing 93% conversion rate. That was before going 6 for 6 on Sunday, however, and this performance should be good enough to give him his first Pro Bowl honor.
Butker and the Chiefs will now take to the road to visit the L.A. Chargers in Week 18 to finish the regular season schedule.