TAMPA, Fla. — With 3 seconds left in the first half on Saturday night at Raymond James Stadium, Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker lined up for the seemingly preposterous: a 69-yard field-goal attempt.

Why not, but ... come on.

The far-fetched venture was from a yard farther than the NFL record set by Jacksonville’s Cam Little last season. And it was just a yard shy of Little’s unofficial record, set in the preseason, of 70 yards.

Implausible as it might have appeared to be for those who haven’t witnessed his range in practice or warmups, Butker didn’t merely eke the ball through.

He pummeled it with such authority that he casually turned away in triumph even as the ball still was soaring into the net, likely good from 75-ish yards. The kick compelled Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes to erupt on the sideline like they’d won a crucial game, and it prompted the star quarterback to come galloping out to the field, among the first to congratulate Butker.

“My hype team,” Butker joked after the Chiefs lost, 16-15, to suffer their eighth straight preseason loss.

And that was after he’d hit from 58 and 45 in the first half.

But then came the confounding stuff that crops up periodically with the third-leading scorer (1,122 points) in Chiefs history behind Nick Lowery (1,466) and Jan Stenerud (1,231).

Evoking memories of last season, when he missed four point-after attempts in 35 tries, Butker missed the ensuing PAT … albeit after initially making it but missing at extra distance after a 10-yard holding penalty.

More jarringly, with 3:27 left he missed wide right on a would-be game-winning field goal from 43 yards out — making for a point of concern for a team that went 1-9 in one-score games last season.

“He’ll be the first to tell you that’s the one that he’ll remember,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said after the game.

Although Butker entertained questions about the one most will remember, that remote shot, he also was subdued about it in ways he might not have been if he didn’t have the rest on his mind.

No doubt Reid read it right when it came to Butker’s broader disappointment.

While Butker mustered a joke about how late the game got to be — “maybe I need some more caffeine for the second half or something,” he said, smiling — he clearly was chagrined.

“Of course; you’ve got to make your kicks,” he said. “So, (I) miss an extra point, miss a game-winner. That’s what I care about, not the 69-yarder or whatever it was.”

Caring about it, of course, means working to fix it.

And Butker was going to need to review it further to understand what went awry since he felt he was “mentally” in the right place for the kick and that it felt good off his foot.

“I was very surprised when I looked up,” he said, adding, “Probably late hips, but … (it) didn’t feel like that when I kicked it.”

But he also allowed as how he’s had a pattern of missing more routine kicks after making longer ones.

So much so, he said, that after “big kicks” it’s occasionally been a “struggle to finish the game” or have it not affect shorter kicks later.

Which is part of why one of his points of emphasis in this training camp has been on the intermediate kicks — from 40 to 50 yards out.

Look, it’s hard not to wonder about what this means.

But it’s also the sort of thing could just as easily be a blip as an issue or source of anxiety for Butker … even if it may well already be that for fans.

After all, he’s been so clutch so often: For instance, he’s hit 36 of 40 postseason career field-goal attempts — including two Super Bowl game-winners.

And he has seemed as strong and comfortable as he ever has.

When last he spoke at training camp in St. Joseph, Mo., he felt liberated from the problematic habit he’d developed a few years ago — to compensate for an ankle injury – of dropping to his plant-foot knee on kick follow-throughs.

Yes, he’d worked away from that last year.

“But I was having to think about it a lot, especially during training camp,” he said in St. Joe on Aug. 5. “And now I don’t have to focus on that, so I’m hoping I can focus on things that matter more (such as) smooth swing thoughts.”

Just such a thought apparently powered the remarkable kick to end the first half.

As he first spoke of it, Butker more or less shrugged and said he had sought to “just get a good strike on it.”

That he did.

“That’s probably as good as I could hit a ball,” said Butker, who figured the wind was behind him, too.

All the more encouraging: He hadn’t really been stressing such long kicks in practice, he said, so it was nice to know he could “just dial that up.”

That range is an amazing asset for the Chiefs to have in their potential repertoire, to be sure.

But more often than not, it’s the little things that figure to make the difference for this team.

Including making the shorter kicks with games on the line — a lapse on Saturday he said will motivate him for practice.

“Listen, I’ve got a lot of trust in him,” Reid said. “I mean, that happens. … We know what he can do.”

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