Alan Truex: Justin Tucker undervalued as football’s greatest kicker
Updated Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Placekickers in football are an afterthought. You notice them after they miss the kick that should have won the game.
Sort of like Chase McLaughlin, who doinked a 47-yarder off the goalpost that would have put Indianapolis ahead of Tampa Bay in the fourth quarter of a game Sunday. The Colts lost 38-35. A major factor in their losing record (6-7) is miserable kicking.
McLaughlin is filling in for Adam Vinatieri, who strained his left knee in 2018 training camp but tried to get by without surgery. Pat McAfee, who was Vinatieri’s holder at the time, said, “I could tell he was a little off.”
Vinatieri now says he should have had surgery in the past offseason, but he again postponed it. After missing 5 field goals and 5 of 38 extra-point tries this season, he accepted the inevitable, landing on injured reserve and scheduling an operation for this week.
At 46, Vinatieri showed he still had power despite his impairment when he kicked a 55-yard field goal. He was recently named to the All-Time NFL Team, as part of the celebration of the league’s 100th season. He’s most famous for a 45-yard field goal to force overtime in a playoff game with Oakland that the New England Patriots won in 2002.
New England’s 67-year-old coach, Bill Belichick said: “The kick he made against Oakland in four inches of snow is the greatest kick I’ve ever seen.”
More than numbers and percentages, kickers are judged by what they accomplish in trying circumstances – wind, snow, rain, with the game and perhaps the season on the line.
You haven’t heard much about Justin Tucker this year. His quiet efficiency for the Baltimore Ravens is lost in the din of rejoicing for Lamar Jackson and his 35 touchdowns – 28 passing, 7 running.
Who cares that Tucker is 23 of 24 on field goals and 47 of 48 on extra points? The former Texas Longhorn gets more media buzz for his opera singing than for his kicking. But it was his last-second 49-yard field goal in driving rain that beat San Francisco in last week’s touted Super Bowl Preview. That was Tucker’s 15th game winner in his 8-year NFL career.
Talk about security blankets, he injects confidence into a team that expects him to score any time they cross the 50-yard-line. Tucker’s career long is 61. But as Jackson observed, “He kicks 65-yarders in practice all the time. He’s got that golden leg.”
Which doesn’t necessarily translate to a ton of gold. Tucker’s $4 million salary ($1.2 million more than Vinatieri) is approximately the going rate for an average backup quarterback.
Within the football culture, kickers are off in their own little universe, practicing kicks, doing nothing most of the time, rarely interacting with the rest of the team.
Their opinions are worth next to nothing. If they talk publicly about their feelings – as Cody Parkey did after missing the kick that ended Chicago’s 2018 season – they are quickly disowned.
But surveying the damage wreaked this year by erratic kickers – Vinatieri in Indy, Brett Maher in Dallas, Ka’imi Fairbairn in Houston, the caravan through New England — I have to wonder if NFL teams should put out more effort and dollars to establish a reliable kicking game.
Who took the foot out of football? Some NFL coaches think a sea change occurred when the extra point was moved back to become a 31-yard attempt. The PAT is no longer automatic, and it’s disturbing the equanimity of kickers. Fairbairn this season has missed 5 extra points, Vinatieri 6. New England’s Stephen Gostkowski missed 4 in 4 games before he left for injured reserve and the Patriots’ kicking got really bad.
I see the placekicker’s role as comparable to a closer in baseball. He’s called on to perform in the most crucial moments of a game. It’s not the sort of pressure in which most athletes thrive. And yet, you hardly ever see a free-agency battle for a kicker. These guys are taken for granted. Until they ruin a team’s season.
