Jon Wertheim speaks with Ravens kicker Justin Tucker and former players about the position everyone wants in practice, and nobody wants in the last three seconds of a game.
The NFL playoffs start next weekend and here's one safe bet: at least a few games will come down to football's great secret hiding in plain sight. We speak of kickers, who score about a third of the points in the NFL, but only get a small fraction of the respect.
Jon Wertheim: He wasn't drafted. He's scored more than a third of the Ravens' points since he's gotten here…John Harbaugh: He is. Absolutely. He would be.Here's the real kicker, as it were: across the NFL, more field goals are being made from longer distances with greater accuracy than ever. But then there are wacky Sundays like the one in October, when normally reliable kickers for the Packers and Bengals combined to miss five field goals in the last 10 minutes.
Tucker's teammate, 6'8" defensive lineman Calais Campbell, whose job includes blocking kicks, says he can detect fear in kickers when the game's on the line.Calais Campbell: You know, it can be really good kickers, until a situation comes and they just – all that confidence goes away, you can see the nervousness in their eyes. And very few kickers have the ability to be able to handle that, that kinda pressure.
Jon Wertheim: We had an NFL kicker tell us,"All the players wanna be us during practice and none of the teammates wanna be us with three seconds left in the game." You're-- you're smiling when I… But it's not all par threes and pumpkin spice latte. There is a real precision to kicking a field goal, an efficient three-man assembly line with the snapper and holder…Justin Tucker: Typically 1.3 seconds, give or take, several hundredths.Jon Wertheim: If it's 1.4 what happens?Jon Wertheim: So just a little bit of time, and someone else is putting their hand up and blocking that kick.
Connor Barth: No. I mean, a K-ball, quarterbacks do not use it. The rest of the position players do not use this ball.
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