Days after earning the Special Teams Player of the Week award, Matthew Wright has been cut. According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the Chiefs have waived their fill-in kicker. In a corresponding move, the Chiefs have activated starting kicker Harrison Butker from IR, per NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero.
Wright represented Kansas City’s third kicker of the 2024 campaign. Butker suffered a knee injury last month that ultimately landed him on injured reserve. The Chiefs initially turned to Jets practice squad kicker Spencer Shrader, who got into two games with the Chiefs. However, Shrader suffered a hamstring injury that also required a stint on IR, leading the Chiefs to add Wright from their practice squad to the active roster.
Over the past two weeks, Wright has been responsible for 26 of the Chiefs’ 38 points. This included a performance from last weekend where the kicker connected on all four of his field goal attempts, including the game-winning attempt that doinked off the upright before going in.
Wright has been called on as a fill-in throughout his career. Since 2020, he’s made appearances with five different squads, and he’s had offseason and/or practice squad gigs with a handful of additional teams. In total, he’s connected on 86.4 percent of his field goal tries and 95.2 percent of his XP attempts. He got his longest look as a starter in 2021 with the Jaguars, when he converted 21 of his 24 FGAs.
The Chiefs will now turn back to Butker, who’s served as the team’s kicker since the 2017 campaign. The veteran’s knee injury popped up in mid-November and ultimately required arthroscopic surgery. Fortunately for the Chiefs, Butker only ended up needing a minimum stay on IR, as the 29-year-old will return to the field after missing only four games.
Butker’s injury followed an offseason where the Chiefs made him the league’s highest-paid kicker with a $6.4MM-per-year deal. In nine games this year, the veteran has connected on 18 of his 20 field goal attempts and 21 of his 22 XP tries. Butker finished last season having converted a career-high 94.3 percent of his field goal tries and all 38 of his extra point attempts, and he was perfect during the Chief’s subsequent Super Bowl run.