The Green Bay Packers, a team with Super Bowl aspirations, know they need to position their kicker well this season, so they’re making a lot of changes to their formation to do so.
As we have seen time and again in the NFL, the difference between winning and losing is very compact. Since 20006,176 regular season games were played, and over 36 percent of those games were decided by three points or less. The most common margin of victory over the same period is a three-point margin, which occurred 929 times.
A missed shot on goal or a missed extra point can often mean the difference between victory and defeat.
Since the Packers 2023 season ended, in an effort to create competition for Anders Carlson and find a top kicker for the upcoming year, we saw Brian Gutekunst sign Jack Podlesny just days after San Francisco lost the playoffs. Then, in free agency, the Packers would add Greg Joseph to the mix.
After offseason programs, the Packers tried to sign UFL record-breaking kicker Jake Bates, but he ultimately signed with Detroit. Gutekunst then acquired James Turner off waivers and released Podlesny.
“We’re grateful to Brian for getting it to where it is now, with three-man competition,” Rich Bisaccia said during OTAs. “We’ll see how long we can keep it going.”
The Packers’ decision to bring three kickers to training camp clearly shows that they want to create as much competition as possible.
As special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia has noted in the past, making sure every kicker gets their share of opportunities during these practices becomes more complex when you have to make sure there are enough reps for three kickers. And in the uncontrolled environment of a preseason game, it becomes an even bigger task.
To avoid having to wear three kickers during OTAs and minicamp, the Packers’ kickers would alternate days off, with two competing and one sitting. However, toward the end, Matt LaFleur had everyone kick on the same day to provide a better apples-to-apples comparison, and each kicked under the same conditions.
LaFleur and Bisaccia are evaluating these kickers on a daily basis, but as LaFleur mentioned, these competitions may not really start to take shape until there are more of these “high-pressure, game-like” situations.
Preseason games can be the best barometer of how each player performs in high-leverage situations, although two-minute drills during training also lend a hand boost intensity.
LaFleur even went a step further, trying to create some stressful situations by ending practice twice, with each kicker having to rehearse to blaring music while their teammates huddled around them, yelling and throwing water at them.
“Let’s just make it as difficult as possible for the kickers,” LaFleur said during OTAs. “We want to put them in situations that are quite uncomfortable. I’d say it’s quite uncomfortable. “Nowhere in football you’re not going to have the whole team lined up around you, but you just try to increase that level of pressure and it was good to see that last one go through the posts.”
From the outside looking in, things seem to be very fluid for the Packers given how the offseason has gone so far. Whether that’s carrying just two kickers or replacing one kicker with someone else, it will depend on how everyone is doing.
Both Carlson and Joseph had their moments during the offseason, but ultimately, day-to-day consistency will determine who will be the Packers’ kicker in Week 1.
“We will continue our investigation to ultimately get the best player we can,” Bisaccia added.
