There were two huge wins last Sunday: The Rams edged the Seahawks to take the NFC West lead, and the Broncos took firm control of the AFC West with their 8th straight win, a victory over the Chiefs. KC is 5-5 and in serious trouble. The Patriots also won their 8th in a row, and Buffalo won a shootout over the Bucs. The Bears beat the Vikes with a last-second field goal and now lead the NFC North. The Jags spanked the Chargers, and the Ravens are now just a game behind the Steelers in the AFC North.
Thursday’s game features the Bills traveling to Houston. On Sunday, Pittsburgh visits Chicago in a matchup of divisional leaders, and the Colts visit Arrowhead with a chance to knock the reeling Chiefs further out of the playoff picture. The Bucs visit the Rams in another battle of divisional leaders on Sunday night, and Carolina meets the Niners in the Bay Area on Monday night.
Here are this week’s lines. All spreads taken from ESPNBet on Tuesday the 18th at 9:40 am CT.
The career of an NFL kicker always hangs by a thread…
Matt Gay got let go by Washington yesterday. His sin? He missed 2 FGs. OK, that’s not good, but both of them were over 50 yards, and overall he was 4/9 from 50+, while nearly perfect inside 50 (9/10).
Note the overall average from 50+ this year is a smidgen over 66%. The last time the league was below 50% was in 1999. But 50 years ago not only were they good @ a mere 25% clip, there were only 37 total kicks attempted from over 50.
He was only 3/9 last year too, despite being 25/36 before then. But his replacement Jake Moody is only 6/12 for his career. The tl;dr is that the sample size was likely too small to make a firm judgement, but the standards and competition for kickers now is so high that just one bad weekend can mean they are toast on Monday, whether said judgement is fair/accurate or not.
As I’ve said before on the SDMB, in any given season, there are about 27 or so good kickers in the NFL (give or take a couple), which is defined, these days, as being perfect (or close to it) on XPs, 85+% accurate out to 50 yards, and at least 50% accurate out to around 57 yards. The issue is that there are 32 teams, which means that there will always be a couple of teams which struggle with their kicking game.
The Packers had cut ties with the reliable (but aging) veteran Mason Crosby after 2022, and then dealt with inconsistent kicking from Anders Carlson (2023) and Brayden Narveson (early 2024), before signing Brandon McManus, who was close to perfect for the remainder of that season.
But, fortunes change quickly in Kicking World: McManus has been dealing with a quad injury for most of this year, which led to a number of bad kicks, and has caused him to miss 3 games so far; they signed Lucas Havrisik as a backup, and while Havrisik nailed a 61-yarder (a franchise record) a few weeks ago, he missed two extra points against the Giants this past Sunday. So, overall, the Packers have only been successful on 71% of their field goals so far, and have missed three XPs. Welcome back to Kicker Hell.
I remember when Seattle went through that. Steven Hauschka was a solid kicker, they even gave him the nickname “House Money” because his kicking was a sure thing. But he had one bad year and they parted ways with him. He went on to be decent in Buffalo for 3 years, even breaking an NFL record in his first year there for the most consecutive 50+ yard field goals (which I’m sure has been surpassed since then). Then Buffalo cut him when they drafted a new kicker.
Meanwhile, Seattle struggled in his absence, which an aging Sebastian Janikowski (who looked so old and out-of-shape that I remember there being jokes about Seattle letting a player’s dad on the field to kick the ball). They moved on to Blair Walsh, who was just terrible. They didn’t have any luck until getting their current guy, Jason Myers, who has been fantastic and recently broke a franchise record for most field goals in Seahawks history. But yeah, good kickers don’t grow on trees.
Agreed, and kickers who actually are drafted (rather than being signed as free agents coming out of college) don’t seem to have any better of a record of success in the pros as the free agents.
Not only that, but there are examples of guys who scuffle around for years, get cut by multiple teams in training camp, etc., who suddenly get into a groove and stick with a team for years.
Steelers QB Aaron Rodgers broke a bone in his left (non-throwing wrist) against the Bengals; Mike Tomlin announced that he doesn’t need surgery on it, and isn’t being ruled out for this week’s game against the Bears.
Packers RB Josh Jacobs left Sunday’s game against the Giants with a knee injury; exams indicated no structural damage, and he may be available to play against the Vikings this week. If he’s unavailable, Emanuel Wilson will likely start.
That was the aforementioned Steven Hauschka. He was initially signed with the Vikings, but was cut before he played. He then was signed to the Ravens, and appeared in half of the games for them for two seasons as a part-time kicker, then got cut. He was signed to the Falcons and Lions because of injuries to each team’s regular kicker, but never actually played in any regular season games for either team. He then went to the UFL to play, before Denver signed him to replace an injured kicker (and he was in 4 games for them). He signed with Seattle after that, and was with them for 6 years.
So talk about a journey for that guy. I’m sure that’s not atypical for a kicker.
Consider Cairo Santos, current kicker for the Bears.
He was drafted out of Tulane by the Chiefs in 2014. He played for KC in 2014 through 2016, making just over 80% of his FG attempts. Then 3 games into the 2017 season, in which he was perfect on both FGs and XPs, he was waived in favor of Harrison Butker, who the Chiefs had signed from Carolina’s practice squad. Santos played the last 5 games of the 2017 season with the Bears. He played a couple of games with both the Rams and Tampa Bay in 2018, and 5 games in 2019 with the Titans. Then, in 2020, he once again signed with Chicago and has been their kicker ever since.
The Bears really need to beat the Steelers and go 8-3 before they run the “gauntlet” of games coming up. We could easily go from 8-3 to 9-6. We shall see.
Kansas City is edging closer to being mathematically eliminated from winning the division. In the event they still make the playoffs, that makes it extremely unlikely that they would get a game in the frigid and unfriendly confines of Arrowhead.
I thought it looked like a trap game earlier this week because it was a Thursday game and Houston’s defense is actually pretty good, keeping them in games despite a sub-mediocre offense.
I would be worried about that run defense if I were Buffalo, though. Houston is below league average on runs but they didn’t look it tonight.
Yeah, he looked a little lost under the heavy pressure. Often he is able to make a guy miss or just muscle his way out of the arms of one tackler, but when he tried that tonight, there was always another guy (or two) right there swarming in. Incredible defensive line performance from the Texans.
And great news for the Patriots, who were already a game ahead of the Bills in the division, while holding the tiebreak advantage.
When the Bills converted on 4th-and-27 using the hook-and-ladder play, I was certain that Buffalo was going to win with a late touchdown. But the Houston D didn’t fold, and the stop on 3rd-and-1 was a key play.