Wide left
Two outcomes in the AFC North this weekend had me thinking about kickers and how quickly things can change.
Never trust a relief pitcher.
I don’t mean that you should never trust him as a person. Lots of those guys are probably honest and trustworthy.
I'm speaking strictly in terms of how reliable those bullpen guys are from one game to the next, never mind one season to the next.
Never trust a relief pitcher.
A great closer one season might be a journeyman the next. A shutdown reliever in April might be a mop-up guy in September. The dynamics of Major League bullpens are constantly shifting.
This applies to almost any longtime relief pitcher. Unless you're talking about Mariano Rivera, there's always a chance that a great reliever will run into trouble. Maybe it will be a sustained slump. Maybe it will just be a couple bad games.
Maybe that relief pitcher will rediscover the magic. Maybe he won't.
Let's take a quick look at one recent example. Craig Kimbrel has a decorated career with a number of accolades. He has 440 career saves and 1,265 career strikeouts. He was so dominant in the early years of his career that he received Cy Young votes and MVP votes in multiple seasons.
In recent seasons, the bottom has fallen out for Kimbrel. He was a -1.1 WAR player last season. An all-star as recently as 2021, Kimbrel simply cannot be trusted anymore. Teams still don't quite see it coming, though, because they keep giving him chances despite his recent struggles.
I think there's a similar dynamic with kickers in the NFL. Sometimes the best kicker in the league will find himself fearing for his job a few years later. Sometimes a kicker who had an exquisite record on long field goals will start missing more of them than he makes. And sometimes the guy who's regarded as the best kicker ever will cost his team a game.
Nothing is forever in sports. But it seems like things change more quickly, and more unpredictably, when it comes to relief pitchers and kickers. Given the final outcomes of two games on Sunday, we're going to focus on a couple kickers here today.
In today's Kanefabe newsletter
Kickers and relief pitchers. You can't trust them. A couple teams learned that the hard way with two kickers who are normally considered among the best in the league. Let’s take a look, and let’s bounce around the NFL a little bit, too.
I'm glad you're here. On we go.
Nothing
Suffice it to say that Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow was not in a chatty mood after his team lost to the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday night and fell to a 4-7 record on the season. His answers to the usual depressing press conference questions were polite and brief.
Even so, his response to a question about his kicker Evan McPherson, who missed two key field goals, was noteworthy in its brevity.
Reporter: “What did you say to Evan after he misses those two field goals at the end?”
Burrow: “Nothing.”
I would say that Burrow generally fits the mold of a typical team-leader type guy that is often expected of successful NFL quarterbacks. Say the right things. Pick up your teammates. Clap and pump fists and slap shoulder pads to rally the team.
Yet, when presented with the dilemma of what to do when your very-good kicker inexplicably stops being good, Burrow cannot be bothered with those expectations. He’s just got nothing to say.
Burrow’s annoyed “no comment” when asked about McPherson on Sunday is telling in the general context of the quarterback as the face of the team. It’s also a far cry from how he was talking about that same kicker a couple years ago. From a postgame interview on CBS:
“Ice in his veins…Unbelievable…You can tell how a kicker is when he walks in the building, how he walks and how he talks with people. Unbelievable.”
The Bengals desperately needed to beat the Chargers this past weekend to keep hanging around the playoff picture. They didn’t lose because of McPherson, but his two misses were huge blows to their chances to win.
Both of those kicks missed wide left. “Unbelievable,” to quote Burrow, but maybe in a different way.
Oh, how things change.
Fair to ask
In the hopes of making sense of a mystery that probably cannot deciphered, a reporter covering the Baltimore Ravens’ loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday asked Justin Tucker about the trend with his missed field goals this season:
Reporter: “…I think that every single one of your misses this year has been wide left. Is there anything to that? Is there something to that trend where every one of your misses is wide to the left?”
Tucker: “Yea, I think that’s fair to ask. I think the short answer is no, each kick is its own kick.”
The longtime Ravens kicker then goes on to use a whole lot of words to say almost nothing. In fact, this interview is a lot of Tucker using platitudes and cliches to essentially say that he tries to kick the ball well when called upon.
It’s impressive, really, to see a kicker apply so many canned answers to questions about two gutting field goal misses.
When it comes to the task of giving non-answers and blathering through a post-game interview, Tucker has come a long way from the days when he used to goof off and joke about not knowing what to say.
Like the Bengals, the Ravens didn’t lose because of Justin Tucker missing those kicks. But they probably win if he makes one of them.
Nobody ever saw a slump coming for Tucker, least of all Tucker himself. After all, he’s a lock for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He holds records, has delivered lots of game-winning field goals, and has a championship. Justin Tucker might be the very best to ever do it.
You still can’t trust him.
Before this season, I would have thought that Tucker was in a tier above the other kickers in the NFL. I would have thought this theory about relief pitchers and kickers doesn’t apply to him, in something like the way that it didn’t apply to Mariano Rivera in baseball.
Not so. In a surprising development this season, Tucker has proven himself to be engaged in the same confounding struggle as the other place kickers around the league. He’s great, until he isn’t, and there isn’t really any way to see it coming.
Tuesday tidbits
Let’s check out some of the other things happening after week 11 of the NFL season.
For whatever it’s worth, the Ravens say that Tucker’s job is safe. That this is a headline on the ESPN NFL page highlights just how surprising his struggles have been.
Here’s another reason why it’s more jarring to see Tucker struggle: he is no longer the most accurate kicker in league history.
Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson wants you to know that the blame for that team’s terrible season starts with him. I want Doug to know that we all knew that already, and that I find it unsettling when he isn’t wearing a visor.
The Denver Broncos are coming off a blowout win over the Atlanta Falcons and headed for a coupe very winnable games before their bye week. Bo Nix might even be an Offensive Rookie of the Year candidate, as Christopher Hart writes over at Mile High Report. You know what I’m going to say, Bo-lievers.
The headline on this Defector article from Samer Kalaf says it all: The Jets Are In Hell, Where They Belong. Although I’m not sure if Aaron Rodgers is any different now than he ever was. We’re just more aware of his nonsense now.
Something that remains more predictable than anything involving kickers or relief pitchers: the Jets finding their way to self-inflicted misery.
