Patriots sign Nick Folk

[Foxypats]

I hope he is an upgrade from Nugent. Now all the people who wanted Ghost cut, I hope they realise how good we had it ! He might have missed some kicks here and there but overall he was very dependable .

 

[Brick27]

It's weird, it's like kickers is the one area where that magical Bill Belichick/Ernie Adams/whatever crazy mojo doesn't seem to apply. All these standard retreads. Where's the 4D chess when it comes to kickers? Where's the, I dunno, Australian kangaroo fighter who uses his feet in such a clever way Bill just somehow knew he'd be a great kicker? So disappointing.

Small sample size. Having AV and Gostkowski has been fantastic.

 

[TBR]

Yikes.

 

[TheRainMaker]

Falcons signed Koo. It will be interesting to see how he does.

 

[Delicate Genius]

Folk was cut by the Cowboys in 2009 for almost blowing a win against the Saints, and he never played again for the Bucs after missing three field goals vs the Patriots two years ago. That was also his last NFL game.

 

[Tony2046]

Jesus...forget TE, OL, etc....

Our situation at PK is downright scary

" we're fine"

 

[Art_Vandelay421]

If Folk doesn't work out perhaps we can coax Rolf Benirschke out of retirement.

who was that hapless kicker for San Diego...?? Yes, Nate Kaeding!

 

[TheBostonStraggler]

Given that the Falcons just picked up the guy who lost to the guy we just cut, and given that Adam Vinatieri has missed 4 FGAs and 4 PATs already, I'd say that we need to find some other baseless claim to try out.

So you're saying the guy we just cut, who beat out the young guy we cut, is better than the old guy the Falcon's cut, and the old guy who we didn't re-sign who now currently isn't making the cut?

 

[supafly]

Yikes.

I think he was dealing with an injury in 2017. Let’s hope that he’s an improvement over the Nuge.

 

[Caretaker]

I remember his last game for Bucs.. well, hopefully two years is enough to recuperate

 

[TinhWoodhead]

yes! more going for on 4th downs!

 

[realtime]

Any kicker we or anybody signs mid-season is defacto the 32nd best kicker in the league or else they'd be kicking for somebody else.

Not necessarily. The Chiefs signed Butker off the Panthers practice squad several weeks into the season a few years ago and he showed very quickly that he was one of the top kickers in the league. Unlikely that someone like Butker is floating around on another team’s practice squad, but at least there is recent precedent.

 

[RobertWeathers]

" we're fine"

Not kicker.

 

[Tony2046]

Not kicker.

I know. I'm just being a dink.

 

[RobertWeathers]

I know. I'm just being a dink.

I know. All good.

In all seriousness they can win a SB with the line and TEs. Certainly not ideal but passable.

****ty FG and XP kicking will be this team's undoing if they don't fix it.

 

[Mack Herron]

Over/under for number of games on our roster?

 

[PatsFanSince74]

Over/under for number of games on our roster?

Well, since he's the third K this season, I'd probably go with the Under, whatever it is, but since the season is half done, the Over wouldn't look bad either.

Bottom line? They're gonna have to hope that games don't come down to an XP or FG...an illusion, of course.

 

[luuked]

The moral: I have no idea how there aren't like 50 guys in the world who can reliably get the job done. I'm sure this is an ignorant position on my part that doesn't properly weight how intense the mental aspect of the job is, but I don't get how there aren't hundreds of sets of parents whose entire college plan for their kid is "eh, make sure he kicks a football real good". Just seems like the weirdest market inefficiency. Like, I get the dearth of QBs and LTs, because the unique combination of traits required to be even a decent NFL starter at either position is absurdly rare and in a lot of ways can't really be learned for 99% of the population. But... kickers?

That's because I don't think many people have a good handle on noise and uncertainty when it comes to events occurring in the real world (i.e. statistics).

First of all lets just agree that there is no human who can do something with a 100% success rate given a sufficiently large sample size. And on the side I don't think it is particularly useful to disparage some activities (i.e. "it is just kicking") over others. Just because they get assigned less value in terms of points and you intuitively think there is less skill involved that isn't necessarily really the case from an objective point of view.

If it was as easy as just hanging out and practicing kicks to get to Tucker levels or beyond you'd already see this. Or at least see a clear improvement in rookie kickers over the first few years as turning pro literally means all they will do most of the time is kicking. But you don't see that improvement in representative group of them so we can say with some confidence that "putting in the hours" is really not the core issue here.

In fact, I'd argue that most the kickers have the mechanics part pretty much mastered already to keep variance low but there are so many other factors (some as you say mental other physical) that affect every kick to the point where all of them have their own unique challenges and the exact combination of them is never the same.

Add in the fact that feet are by design less "fine mechanical" than anything you do by hand and you will end up with some normal variance to the process of kicking.

Tucker's edge might as well be genetic. Maybe he has a better control and feel in his feet for the ball than most other players which even further reduces variance. What is doubtful is that he works substantially harder than most other kickers in the league. They all work their asses off.. if not they'd be replaced in an instant.

 

[Froob]

Bring those white pants back

 

[tasmlab]

Overall, I think this year we probably will not have confidence in the kicking game.

It will make the games more exciting! Some of the early blow-outs this year could've used some tension.