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Kicker saga continues, Bears cut all - only Piniero remains


malagabears

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I think Vedvik is a really strong rookie kicking prospect and wouldn’t oppose bringing him in at all, but with that said if Fry makes every kick after showing well all training camp and/or if Pineiro makes his next 5 or so kicks without a miss the next 2 weeks after showing well all training camp the aesthetics of this whole kicking competition being much ado about nothing wouldn’t look good at all. Ultimately I don’t care so long as whatever this is ends up with us having a competent kicker in 2019 and ideally one who’s a long term option, but if our rookies perform well all month only to get dumped for another rookie with no NFL resume who has looked good all month but never kicked in a real game it isn’t going to ease the minds of anyone on Sundays and gives us exactly zero further assurance for having a competent 2019 kicker. Patience isn’t high on anyone’s list in this after how last year ended and that’s completely understandable, but despite that we have to have at least some patience with the kicker situation if our guy is going to be a kid and not an established veteran.

IMO, Daniel Carlson is an excellent example of why we need to have at least some patience with a young kicker. A bunch here liked him for us in the draft or as an UDFA prior to the Parkey signing, and I was one of them. He was drafted 5th round last year by MIN but went 0-3 on FG in week 2 and was immediately cut. He signed with Oakland shortly thereafter and proceeded to go 16-17 on FG and perfect on XP for the Raiders. I can’t speak for you guys but I would take Daniel Carlson as our kicker right now. Hell, he made Pineiro expendable to OAK and Pineiro was likely (IMO) to win that job last year before his preseason injury. Also of note - Carlson’s replacement in MIN, Dan Bailey, was just 21-28 on field goals and had a conversion percentage worse than that of Parkey despite playing his home games in a dome.

There wasn’t a single kicker in the league last year who was perfect (unless you count Tavecchio who kicked for 3 games in place of an injured Matt Bryant or Johnny Hekker who finished 1 game for Zeirlein for the Rams after an injury), so that certainly can’t be the standard to which we hold undrafted rookie kickers. Whoever our kicker is can’t get Parkey’s 11-miss rope by any stretch but Jesus they have to get a realistic shot. 

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I would hope Pace is at least talking internally about Vedvik.

Neither kicker has lost the job yet and an 85% FG hit rate for rookies ain't all that bad provided they're perfect on PATs.  That would bring them into the 90% range overall and that should be acceptable.

My main concern with Fry is leg strength not consistency.  He may or may not be good at 50 + yards in late fall and winter and even now his kickoffs aren't much to brag on.  Piniero has the leg but like a big hitter off the tee can he find the fairway often enough?

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6 hours ago, soulman said:

I would hope Pace is at least talking internally about Vedvik.

Neither kicker has lost the job yet and an 85% FG hit rate for rookies ain't all that bad provided they're perfect on PATs.  That would bring them into the 90% range overall and that should be acceptable.

My main concern with Fry is leg strength not consistency.  He may or may not be good at 50 + yards in late fall and winter and even now his kickoffs aren't much to brag on.  Piniero has the leg but like a big hitter off the tee can he find the fairway often enough?

Not to keep taking our kicking situation back to Gould, but what you’re describing with Fry is exactly what we had in young Gould. We wouldn’t even try 50+ yard FG with him for his first few years, but he got stronger and became in time one of the most efficient kickers in the league from long distance as well. I have the same concerns you do but if he’s relatively automatic from 47 and in then you can live with that. Fry was that on Thursday and also in the AAFL this spring. There’s a ton of value in that IMO. 

I don’t think 85% is just the threshold for a rookie for FG accuracy. I think it’s an acceptable hit rate for any kicker. If you look at kicker FG conversion % league-wide over the past decade you’ll see that about half the kickers in the league are at 85% or above each season. The really good ones are in that group just about every year, the average ones some years, and those who don’t make it aren’t around long. IMO, looking at it from any individual single season analysis leaves a lot of room for volatility though.

I believe you mentioned that your background is in the financial field, so I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir when I talk about the short term volatility of percentages, but in terms of kickers and an 85% success threshold a kicker who goes 25/30 doesn’t make it, but 26/30 does. 28/33 doesn’t, but 29/34 does. You’re talking the difference in one kick over a 4-month span being the breaking point for acceptability or non-acceptability without consideration of any variables. That’s a short sighted analysis to me.

What I’m looking for is a guy who’s in that 85%+ range over the long term. The bigger sample size is going to give you a more predictable result. We can’t ever know that if we’re not going to actually allow for a long term analysis. Remember that the guy who just went 76.7% for us last year on FG was 91.3% in 2017 and is 83.9% for his career over 118 total FG attempts.

The whole discussion around conversion rate leaves out a HUGE part of the analysis though, and that’s the ability to perform under pressure. Adam Vinatieri’s career conversion rate is 84.3%, or only slightly higher than that of Parkey. But man, he is NAILS in crunch time. I can’t speak for anyone else but for me, especially for a team that has Super Bowl aspirations, finding the guy who makes kicks when all the chips are in the middle of the table is more important. If Parkey made the kicks that mattered most last year the dialogue about him would be different. That doesn’t mean he’d still be here necessarily but he’d probably still be in the league. 

We have no way to know whether any of the kid kickers can be that guy until they actually have to kick in that situation. That’s again where the patience comes into play. Unless we’re going to sign a vet we aren’t going to be able to get away from the anxiety about whether or not our kicker has the fortitude to make big kicks. 

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12 minutes ago, blkwdw13 said:

Minnesota, the land of knee jerk reaction when it comes to kickers. They probably should have just stuck with Carlson.

It would have been hard after that meltdown game against GB that he had.

A 5th is steep for an unknown.

 

I would see if Carolina wants to trade Slye for a conditional pick. 

7 if he makes the team

6 if he kicks in 10 games 

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2 minutes ago, WindyCity said:

It would have been hard after that meltdown game against GB that he had.

A 5th is steep for an unknown.

 

I would see if Carolina wants to trade Slye for a conditional pick. 

7 if he makes the team

6 if he kicks in 10 games 

It's basically 2 5th round picks now for a kicker, that's very steep.

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