There’s no position in sports quite like the placekicker in professional football: a player who comes on for 10, maybe 15, plays per game, and is asked to kick an oblong ellipsoid between two yellow posts or to the other team. Often, the entire game rests on whether or not that oddly shaped ball passes between those posts.
Nothing else in sports really compares. The closest comparison might be to a closer in baseball, who must protect the lead and get the last three outs, but the closer might throw 25 pitches in his one inning of work. A kicker gets only one opportunity to attempt a potential game-winning field goal. Other offensive position players in football, like wide receivers and running backs, can advance the ball without scoring; for a kicker, it’s all or nothing.
Setting aside the actual point of the position, the placekicker and the punter are quite clearly the odd men out on a football team. Because the position is so specialized, most kickers are not at least 6 feet tall, like most other players. They certainly don’t weigh 300 pounds, as linemen do. From the sideline, they look like you or I might if we put on a football uniform. The helmet looks a bit big on their heads, like they are too young to be playing football. They often get away with wearing those two-bar or even one-bar facemasks that other players are not allowed to wear, reinforcing the stereotype that they are not true football players. And they just simply look funny standing next to their big, bulky teammates. It’s like the reverse of that video of Andy Reid as a kid participating in a punt, pass, and kick competition where he towers over the other kids, looking like a man among boys. In this case, though, the kicker looks like a boy among men.
Ironically, this ugly duckling of football is one of the few players on the field who actually plays the ball with his foot. He is the American game’s only connection to the other forms of football played around the world. While American football gradually introduced such concepts as the line of scrimmage and the forward pass, soccer and rugby elements were eliminated. Players could no longer attempt free kicks from anywhere on the field. Instead, the game of football became a game played with the hands. Left as a relic to times gone by was the placekicker, who could score three points on a field goal attempt, or one point on an extra point attempt.
But the development of dedicated placekickers in the National Football League is relatively recent. Until the 1960s, when roster limits were expanded to 40 players, which soon became today’s 53, many players played both ways. Because the kicking positions were so rarely used, offensive linemen or quarterbacks often served as the placekickers on their teams. This meant that scenes like what we saw two weeks ago, when Ndamukong Suh attempted a field goal for the Detroit Lions, were common.
Enough with the history lesson. The wackiness about the kicking position even extends to the players’ footwear, or lack thereof. Did you know that there were several kickers in the 1980s and 1990s that kicked barefoot? Can you believe that? In 20-degree weather, these guys would take off their right or left shoe and kick a rock-hard football with their bare foot. What were they thinking? It gives a whole new meaning to the term “icing the kicker.”
It’s hard not to feel sympathy for placekickers, who are put in the highest-pressure situation and given one or two chances. Take Nick Folk, for example, who last weekend for the New York Jets missed three field goals, including one potential overtime game-winner. If New York had not pulled that game out with one minute left in overtime, Folk would have been the goat. Everyone has a bad week sometimes, but for placekickers it’s simply not acceptable these days. If you have one bad week, it’s enough for the coach to start having tryouts for another kicker. Running backs, wide receivers and quarterbacks might get a free pass, but kickers must be perfect.
So next time you see a kicker miss a field goal, cut him a little slack. He’s got enough pressure on him already.
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