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NFL Kickers Fascinate, Infuriate and Have Some Wondering If They’re Necessary
- Updated: November 18, 2016
This is the world of a kicker.
It’s full of pressure and a lack of appreciation for the position. It’s also full of pranks. Few players have more opportunities—more time—to create trouble than kickers. So it wasn’t a surprise when former kicker Lawrence Tynes was approached by his then-Giants teammates to target quarterbacks Eli Manning, Tim Hasselbeck and Anthony Wright for some good-natured mischief.
Tynes agreed and went about letting the air out of the driver’s side tires of each of their cars. He then left a bicycle pump taped to the doors of each of their cars so they could pump the tires back up.
Tynes thought no one had discovered he was the deflator. But the quarterbacks found out and retaliated. When Tynes came to his car on the last day of camp in Albany, New York, his entire car was caked, bumper-to-bumper, with Vaseline.
“Took me about six hours to even make it safe to drive,” said Tynes, who can now laugh about the scene.
Part court jester, part curiosity and part object of derision, an NFL kicker holds a distinct place in football hierarchy. While they fascinate those who play alongside them, others around the game continually assess their true value.
This is the world of a kicker.
Not long ago, offensive lineman Geoff Schwartz was standing on the sideline during a game. The temperature on the field was over 100 degrees. Suddenly, Schwartz noticed something odd.
It was his kicker. Despite the sweltering temperatures, this kicker was on the sideline wearing a long, heavy winter coat.
“That’s odd,” Schwartz thought.
Then the kicker’s hand moved from underneath the coat, and in it was a Gatorade cup full of urine.
“Now I get it,” Schwartz thought.
“I’m indifferent about [kickers],” said Schwartz, an eight-year veteran who last played for the Giants in 2015. “They have a job to do just like the rest of us. If they don’t make the kicks, they get questioned. If I don’t block for the quarterback well enough, my teammates question me.”
But kickers get more than questions; they generate a special kind of resentment.
Hall of Famer Michael Strahan remembers how one season when he was playing with the Giants, one of the team’s kickers was taking a full load of law school classes. While the other players were out practicing, the kicker would be in the locker room, studying.
Then, late in practice, the kicker would come out, practice for 25 minutes and then go back into the locker room.
“That’s why most of us hate kickers,” said Strahan, mostly kidding.
Jokes aside, the men who occupy this oddest of positions take their jobs as seriously as any linebacker. They are professionals. Hard workers.
They win games. They win Super Bowls. They win the respect of teammates. One is even in the Hall of Fame. They have been a key part of the game since there was a game.
“[When] guys in the locker room…would look over and say, ‘Man, you got the beautiful schedule, just chilling all day long,’ I used to say, ‘Yeah, everyone wants to be a kicker—except on Sunday,'” Tynes said. “You ask the other 52 guys in the locker room, and everyone will agree with that.”
Former kicker Jay Feely echoed the sentiments of kickers and other players interviewed that inside the locker room, he and his kicking brethren are well respected.
In 2005, Feely put this notion to the test when, as a member of the Giants, he missed three kicks, two in overtime, as …
