By Jason Lloyd | September 4, 2019 at 11:00 AM
The NFL has a kicking crisis, but it isn’t what you think. The problem isn’t that the league is struggling to find good kickers. The problem is the perception that the league is struggling to find good kickers.
Kickers are making field goals at a consistently higher rate than at any time in the game’s history — from longer distances, too. Football doesn’t need better kickers. Football needs better patience.
“I’m peeing in the wind on this. I feel like I’m screaming on a mountaintop,” said Phil Dawson, who kicked for 20 years in the NFL and ranks in the top 10 in career field goals. “Kicking a football is hard. I know the common mindset is you can find a kicker on every corner. ‘It’s easy. What’s the big deal? All they have to do is kick.’ Kicking is an extremely specialized skill and there aren’t many humans who can do it. I’d suggest the mindset isn’t just wrong, it’s completely wrong.”
And yet the NFL cycled through a... [Subscription Needed]