Younghoe Koo is signing with the New York Jets for the 2026 campaign, another chance for a kicker who was once among the league’s best and is now trying to steady a career that has slipped over the last two seasons.
Koo spent the 2025 campaign with the Atlanta Falcons and New York Giants, and his path to New York has been anything but straight. He started his career with the Los Angeles Chargers, had a stint in the AAF, then returned to the NFL in 2019 and first joined the New England Patriots' practice squad before signing with Atlanta. The move paid off quickly. By 2020, Koo had earned a Pro Bowl nod, hit 94.9 percent of his field goal attempts and led the league in scoring with 144 points.
For a while after that, Atlanta treated him like the answer at kicker. Koo remained the Falcons’ full-time option until the 2025 season, when the bottom fell out. He lost his starting job after missing what would have been a game-tying field goal in Week 1 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Atlanta benched him the following week and waived him the week after that, turning to Parker Romo.
Koo then signed with the Giants after his seven-year run with the Falcons and appeared in five games. He made four of his six field goal attempts and 11 of his 12 extra point attempts, but New York waived him in December after he missed a pair of field goals against the Washington Commanders. The numbers tell the story as plainly as the depth chart did: the kicker who once looked automatic no longer did.
That is what makes the Jets' decision notable today. They are not signing a prospect or a steady midcareer stopgap. They are taking a chance on a veteran whose best season came in 2020, whose recent seasons have been uneven, and whose name still carries the memory of a Pro Bowl run even as his latest stops have ended in frustration. For Koo, the next kick is not just another job battle. It is a chance to show the version of himself the league once trusted again exists.
