Graham has only played two or three games. Hardly a straight comparison. Folk had a terrible game in Cleveland, but outside of that, and if you don't include the 61-yard effort in Miami (because if you do it's only proving a lack of objectivity) he's been fine. 19/24 with a long of 56. That's 79%.
I totally agree. I've argued this point many times before, but NFL kickers are, without question, the most undervalued position players in all of modern sports. People always make snide remarks like "he's just a kicker, who cares" or "why would they waste a high draft pick on a fucking kicker?!?!?!", but the bottom line is, the kicker is almost always the leading scorer for any championship team, and SO many big games come down to a field goal. Having an unreliable head-case for a kicker is a MAJOR concern.
I would give Folk one more shot this week.. if he has a bad game, then he's done and quite frankly it doesn't matter who is signed because at that point Folk will be completely shot and useless to this team. Anybody would be better. But I would prefer Reed to Brown for sure. Brown sucks and can't handle a big kick if his life depended on it.
And I can't see why anybody would think Jeff Reed is a better alternative, the guy has hit 68 percent of his FG's this season. Why would you replace a kicker hitting 73 percent with a guy who's hitting 68 percent? If you take a look at this link you'll see that of the kickers who've kicked 25 or more FG's you'll see that Folk isn't doing all that bad. There's only a 6 or 7 percentage point difference between all these guys... http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/stats/b...FL&year=season_2010&sort=221&timeframe=ToDate It's kind of late in the season to be experimenting with kickers. We've put Nick Folk in some very long and somewhat unmakeable situations this year. I can think of one 50+ yarder he was asked to make into the wind that I knew had no chance but he almost made it. I think the Jets should settle down and concentrate on getting more productivity out of it's offense and stop focusing on the kicker so much. Do your job and you won't need him at all.
The bottom line is that this team relies on it's kicker to score points. You can say that we kick too much, and I agree, but that doesn't change the fact that we do it. We have a team based on playing solid defense, winning the field position battle and scoring when we can. The offense is coming along but with a 2nd year QB you can't rely on the offense to score as many TD's. The kicker needs to do his job too. Folk has been struggling to bang extra points and chip shot FG's at times. That is scary. I can give him a pass on missing long ones, but I'd like to see at least a 50% rate from 40+, right now he's at 44% from that range. Reed has a long history of being very accurate (top 10 all time). I don't know what his problem has been this season but Pitt is historically one of the most difficult places for a kicker to kick. Maybe a change of scenery would help him out, I don't know.
FG's are one thing. But, his kickoffs are atrocious. Especially of late, he can't even break the 10 yard line. Like Rex said, the kick offs have gotten worse over the past few weeks, so you have to wonder. The type of team we have predicated around defense, we need a kicker who can boom kick offs. I'd like Reed only for the sheer fact that he's been kicking in Pittsburgh for years, and that stadium is extremely difficult to kick in.
Yeah but is this the time of the year to be taking a chance like that? You have a kicker with a big leg who's hit a respectable 73 percent of his kicks, which is right there with his historical average, so what is the big need to get rid of the guy? There's an old saying... "The devil I know is better than the devil I don't know...", and it would be advisable for the Jets to consider this before they make any abrupt moves here.
I'm sure they will be taking many things into consideration before making such an important decision. Until Westhoff proves me wrong, I'll agree with his decisions on personnel.
my buddy who plays soccer hit 3 40 yard field goals in a row during the summer. maybe he should show up at jets atlantic training center?
If you have a used car that has a few problems should you get rid of it and buy another used car? Maybe the next car is going to have a whole new set of problems the other car didn't have... You see? Sometimes you're better off fixing what you have than going into the unknown. And it's kind of late in the season to be dealing with the unknown if you ask me.
You'd think that out of the entire population of the United States/Canada (or the world for that matter), you could find an athlete that can kick the ball through the endzone 10 times out of 10 and can get it through the uprights every time from within at least 40 yards
Really? Gostkowski was the Pats kicker for a majority of the season and was placed on IR. ...poor argument.
Sure you can find people who can do that. Can probably find some women that can do that. But can you do that when the game is on the line and 11 opposing defenders, some over 300 pounds, are coming like locomotive trains trying to prevent it?
