Are NFL kickers becoming too good?

[Deberg_1990]

Akers kicks a 63 yearder.....Kaeding went 5 for 5....

Why are the Chiefs still stuck with a guy who struggles with 41 yarders?


http://www.slate.com/articles/sports...ld_goals_.html


in Week 1 kickers made 67 of 72 field-goal attempts, or 93 percent. Oh, and the 49ers’ David Akers became the fourth kicker—after Tom Dempsey in 1970, Jason Elam in 1998, and Sebastian Janikowski last year—to kick a 63-yarder. He also became the fifth active NFL kicker to make one from beyond 60.

I’ve written before that the improvement in NFL kicking since the 1970s is one of the greatest non-equipment-aided performance leaps in any sport. Today’s kickers are bigger, stronger, physically and mentally better conditioned, and, most important, more technically sophisticated than their counterparts in the early days of the “sidewinder” or “soccer-style” kicker. This guy, for one, wouldn’t sniff the field today.

Kickers are so good now—more precisely, the distance from which they can score three points and their accuracy from all distances has increased to such a degree—that NFL coaches use them more than ever. NFL teams attempted a record 1,011 field goals in 2011, which works out to about four attempts per game. In 1984, the figure was 3.5 FG/G. In 1974, it was 3.0. As kickers have improved, the NFL has tried to make their job harder: in 1974, moving the goalposts to the rear of the end zone; in 1995, placing the ball at the spot of the kick instead of the line of scrimmage after a missed FG; in 1999, making them boot new, hard K balls.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

I think the popular opinion was that the Chiefs drafted Medlock because of the UCLA connection.

He was also like 90% on his FG his senior season, a Groza finalist, and concensus 1st-team all American.

The pick wasn't completely without merit.

[Thig Lyfe]

Pioli needs to man up and draft a kicker in the 1st round. The Raiders did and they ended up going to the Super Bowl.

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

He was also like 90% on his FG his senior season, a Groza finalist, and concensus 1st-team all American.

The pick wasn't completely without merit.

Oh I agree. I didn’t have a problem with the pick. It was a middle rounder in a position of need. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t. Didn’t follow his career in the CFL, but sounds like hes turned himself around if hes made it back to the NFL.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

Oh I agree. I didn’t have a problem with the pick. It was a middle rounder in a position of need. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t. Didn’t follow his career in the CFL, but sounds like hes turned himself around if hes made it back to the NFL.

His problem was never with the leg.

He apparently went all Zach Greinke during that first preseason. I can't recall who told me but I guess there was a point during TC that he sat in his dorm and cried, literally, not in a petulant fashion but in an innocent fashion, as if he were just mentally "broken".

[CoMoChief]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

He was also like 90% on his FG his senior season, a Groza finalist, and concensus 1st-team all American.

The pick wasn't completely without merit.

Really? I didn't know that. I never heard of Justin Medlock when we drafted him. As far as I was concerned Mason Crosby was THE kicker to draft out of that class.

[whoman69]

Originally Posted by KC Fish

We have to draft a new kicker guys..... like pronto!

I don't think we'll see a thread about drafting a kicker in the first being a key to winning a SB.