FOOTball

The NFL kicker has always been a mystery to me.

Every other position on the team has a plethora of different scenarios and situations where they have to react accordingly. Blitzing and zone defenses working in harmony with one another, a runningback having to pick up a cornerback blitz, wideouts breaking off their routes to find an empty zone, Quarterbacks having to check down to the hot route... I can sympathize with having an occasional brain-fart at those positions. But a kicker? They have one job... Kick a pig-skin between two yellow posts.

I know that it takes talent to be an NFL kicker, I'm not saying that it doesn't. But when kicking is all that you are asked to do, day in and day out, it is hard understand the inconsistency of today's pro kicker. You go to practice several days a week and kick hundreds and hundreds of times. You don't go through physically demanding practices like the rest of the team. You don't sit through four hour film sessions dissecting the upcoming opponents tendencies. You just live on the other end of the practice field with hours of time to hone your craft. Then maybe 4 or 5 times a game, you are asked to do the only thing that you have been working on since you graduated from college. I would think that there would be some consistency in the results.

I am by no means great at darts. But if someone paid me 3 million dollars a year to really work hard on my dart skills week after week after week and that was the only responsibility... I would like to think that I could stand 10 to 15 feet away from any dart board at any bar in the U.S., for 16 weeks, and at least hit the somewhere close to the middle at least 90% of the time.

Am I being too hard on them?

- S