Stephen Gostkowski
American football player (born 1984)
Stephen Carroll Gostkowski ( gost-KOW-skee; born January 28, 1984) is an American former professional football placekicker who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 15 seasons. A member of the New England Patriots for most of his career, Gostkowski is the franchise's all-time leading scorer. He played college football for the Memphis Tigers and was selected in the fourth round of the 2006 NFL draft by the Patriots, where Gostkowski spent his first 14 seasons. In his final season, Gostkowski played for the Tennessee Titans.
Gostkowski led the league in scoring five times during his career, including four consecutive from 2012 to 2015, and is the first post-merger player to lead the league in scoring for more than two consecutive seasons. He also holds the NFL record for consecutive extra points. Gostkowski received four Pro Bowl and two first-team All-Pro selections and won three Super Bowl titles.
Early life
Gostkowski graduated from Madison Central High School in Madison, Mississippi, in 2002. While there, he won four varsity letters each in football and soccer, and three in baseball, and was an All-State honoree in all three sports. Gostkowski holds the school record for longest field goal, a 55-yard kick.
“Stephen Gostkowski” enters the record as american football player (born 1984). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Stephen, Gostkowski and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Stephen Gostkowski” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Stephen, Gostkowski and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
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 Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q364812. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984, 2006, 2012 and 2015.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Stephen Gostkowski”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Stephen Gostkowski primary sources, Stephen Gostkowski archive and Stephen research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Stephen Gostkowski”?
- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Stephen Gostkowski” 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.