(All of the data and visuals included in this post are from Coug Center’s study on the subject. Please go check out their post on this.)
Is having a good placekicker good? Well, yes of course it’s good. Good kickers make more field goals than bad ones, which puts more points on the scoreboard, which is helpful regarding the whole winning games thing.
But! A good kicker can also lead your head coach to make decisions more conservatively—which is to say, more inefficiently from a win probability perspective. Not all the time, mind you.