Shaun Suisham’s 48-yard field goal against Jacksonville last week was an insignificant footnote to an insignificant preseason game, at least concerning the score. Get it over with, make the final cuts and let’s start the real season.
For Suisham, however, the implications were highly significant. If the kick did not allow him to keep his job with the Washington Redskins, it gave him, as Joe Theismann noted on the telecast, “a leg up” in his competition with Dave Rayner. (Theismann quickly apologized for the pun.)
Both had few chances. Suisham made a 20-yarder and missed a 52-yard attempt before his kick against the Jaguars. Rayner made his only attempt, from 25 yards. Their kickoffs were close, as were their practice kicks.
“I would say the field goal last week was pretty important,” Suisham said the other day. “I’m glad I had an opportunity to make it.”
Now he has an opportunity to establish longevity with a team that lately hasn’t had much at the position. If he ends a fourth straight season as the Redskins’ kicker, it would be the longest streak since Chip Lohmiller kicked from 1988 to 1994.
For the better part of two decades, the Redskins knew who their kicker would be. Mark Moseley, the only kicker to be named NFL MVP, held the job from 1974 to 1985. After a few years came Lohmiller, who twice led the league in field goals.
Since then, the Redskins have held more auditions than “American Idol.” They used six kickers in the five seasons after the departure of Lohmiller, who signed with New Orleans in 1995. Since 2000, the team has used 12 kickers - a list that includes Ola Kimrin and James Tuthill, Kris Heppner and Jose Cortez. Ethan Albright, the long snapper since 2001, said he cannot remember them all.
“It was a nightmare,” he said of the constant turnover.
Ever since Suisham made eight of nine field goals to win the job from an injured John Hall and replacement Nick Novak in 2006, the turnover among kickers has calmed down (although Hunter Smith is the fourth punter in three years), at least for now.
But who knows what the season will bring?
“There’s a lot of kickers out there out of work,” special teams coach Danny Smith said. “You’d be shocked at the number of calls I get. … On a Monday, if we miss a field goal on a Sunday, I get 10 calls. I get calls from agents [and] players; I get calls that you can’t believe. Some of these [kickers] would be surprised about guys that they think are their buddies.”
In 2007, after winning the job the year before, Suisham made 82.9 percent of his kicks, but he never tried one from 50 yards or longer. In 2008, Suisham missed three of four from 50-plus and fell to 72.2 percent overall. Paging Mr. Rayner.
Rayner knows all about the tenuous, itinerant life of a kicker. He has played for three teams and has worked out with three others since he kicked for Green Bay in 2006 (he started out with Indianapolis the year before). The Packers drafted Mason Crosby the following spring, Rayner was released and his life has become a perpetual tryout.
“It’s a position where, if you’ve got a job, sometimes you still don’t want to unpack your bags,” Olindo Mare said in 2007 after he was traded from Miami, where he kicked for 10 seasons, to New Orleans. “And if you’re out of work, you always want to keep a bag packed with your cleats and workout stuff ready to go, because you never know when a team is going to call and want you to come [for an audition]. It’s certainly not the most secure livelihood, you know?”
Once a kicker gets established, it can turn into a lifetime post. But Jason Hanson (17 years with Detroit), John Kasay (13 in Carolina) and a few others are exceptions. Turnover remains rampant. More than half of the kickers in the league - 17 - have been with their teams for three years or less.
John Carney, the NFL’s oldest player at 45, is again with a new team. Last year, after Lawrence Tynes got hurt during the preseason, Carney made 35 of 38 field goals for the New York Giants and reached the Pro Bowl. Even when Tynes was healthy, the Giants stuck with Carney.
But not this season. The Giants released Carney, who remained unemployed until he signed with his previous team, the Saints, last month to replace the suspended Garrett Hartley. When Hartley returns from his four-game ban, Carney again might be looking for work.
Danny Smith, who has seen kickers (and punters) come and go since joining the Redskins in 2004, had been through this before. He was an assistant in Buffalo when Rian Lindell finally solved the Bills’ kicking woes. “We had a variety of guys” before that, he said.
Prior to David Akers’ arrival in 1999, the Eagles had a revolving door for kickers. Smith was there for that, too. “It happens a lot,” he said.
Kickers have improved since evolving from converted soccer players to lifelong football players. In the 1991 season, when the Redskins last went to the Super Bowl, Lohmiller led the league in field goals despite converting just 72.1 percent of his kicks. But the league average was only 73.5 percent, and the success rate on field goals of 50 yards or more was 44.6 percent. Last season, NFL kickers made 84.5 percent of their kicks, hitting 63.4 percent from 50-plus.
Kickers might be better than ever, but so are all the others calling for jobs.
“It’s a very competitive position within the league and outside the league,” said Hunter Smith, who holds for Suisham. “There are a hundred-and-however-many Division I programs and all the other divisions in college. Every senior college kicker has an aspiration to go to the NFL.
“The thing that’s different about kickers and punters is the football field is the same size [for everyone], and what we’re competing against is yardage. The ball’s the same. And so a guy can come from a junior college somewhere in Louisiana or a Big Ten school and still be really good.”
Suisham, who played at Bowling Green, was one of those kickers. He started out with Dallas in 2005, was released and went looking for a job like hundreds of others. But he doesn’t really want to discuss such distractions now, not after fending off a challenge from Rayner that included “kickoff” competitions during practice and daily media updates.
“I’m here to kick off and kick field goals,” he said. “I really try not to overthink things and look too deep into things that are out of my control. The only thing I can control is making field goals and kicking off well. That’s my focus.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.