Matt Prater
American football player (born 1984)
Matthew Phillip Prater (born August 10, 1984) is an American professional football placekicker. Regarded as one of the best long-distance kickers in NFL history, he held the NFL record for longest field goal (64 yards) from 2013 until 2021 and holds the NFL record for most 50+ yard field goals in a career with 83. Prater is 13th in NFL history in field goals made, with 425, and has the second most field goals made by an active NFL player, six shy of Nick Folk's 431.
He played college football for the UCF Knights, and was originally signed by the Lions as an undrafted free agent in 2006.
He was cut by the Denver Broncos after completing a suspension for violating the NFL's substance abuse policy. With the Lions in the 2016 and 2017 seasons, Prater set the NFL records for consecutive field goal conversions of 50+ yards (14 field goals) and 55+ yards (seven field goals).
Early life
Prater attended Estero High School in Estero, Florida. During his high school football career with the Wildcats, he converted 56 of 58 extra point attempts and 14 field goals, including one of 49 yards. Prater converted 84% of his kickoffs in the end zone for touchbacks. He was named second-team All-State, first-team all-conference and All-Southwest Florida.
The public source identifies “Matt Prater” as american football player (born 1984). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Matt, Prater and American.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q542303. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984, 2013, 2021 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Matt Prater” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.