It’s the small spot on a kicker’s foot, no bigger than the size of a quarter, that can make all the difference. Seasons hang on this spot. Careers are made, sometimes broken.
So many nuances influence kicking a football through two uprights. As Green Bay Packers rookie kicker
Anders Carlson aligned his 41-yard field goal attempt with 6 minutes, 21 seconds left in Saturday night’s fourth quarter, a kick that would set the tone for
everything that followed, he checked the flags. A crosswind had been blowing all night through spitting, often pouring rain, pushing the football right to left.
Long snapper Matt Orzech dug his toes in the ground before the snap.
Holder Daniel Whelan waited for the football.
Carlson focused on that spot.
It was elusive for him all season, unleashing a string of missed kicks, a repetition that built this gnawing doom as they continued. Before Orzech even snapped the football Saturday night, you felt it. This 41-yarder, a kick that could give the Packers a more-secure, 7-point lead, should have been automatic. It wasn’t. Because it hasn’t been. Instead, Carlson’s miss was uncomfortably predictable. He missed a kick in 10 of his final 12 games, including each of his final five. In that five-game stretch, each of his misses came within 45 yards.
When the football left Carlson’s foot on his final kick this season, it started left and stayed there. From the start, he never gave his kick a chance.
“The wind was right to left,” Carlson said, “so I knew to play it a little right, middle. Off my foot, it just came more left than I wanted it to. There at the end, it took a little tail outside where I wanted it to.”
That small spot on a kicker’s foot changes things. The Packers outplayed the NFC’s top seed during most of their divisional-round playoff matchup Saturday night. Then, suddenly, the San Francisco 49ers had the ball and the one thing no opponent can give in the postseason, a second chance. They marched 69 yards over 12 plays, draining the clock until running back Christian McCaffrey scored the game-winning touchdown with 1:07 left.
Had Carlson made his kick, McCaffrey’s 6-yard run would have only tied the score. The Packers would have 67 seconds to give their kicker the second chance, this time a potential game-winning field goal. Instead, failing to put those 3 points on the board meant the 49ers were in the driver’s seat to the NFC championship game, handing the Packers a
24-21 loss.
Even worse, Carlson’s miss sealed what everyone around the Packers dreaded for months now, if not all the way back to training camp. With Carlson failing to make kicks at the consistency required in professional football, this season was always in danger of ending prematurely off his foot. Coach Matt LaFleur, so despondent afterward he was unusually subdued, tried to preemptively protect the rookie.
“It’s never one play,” LaFleur said in his opening statement, before anyone could even ask him about the one play. “Because I know, I’m sure, a lot of it’s going to the missed field goal, but there were plenty of opportunities.”
LaFleur was right. It wasn’t about one play. The Packers’ loss Saturday night traced directly to general manager Brian Gutekunst’s strategy this spring. In an offseason defined by renewal, rebuilding around quarterback Jordan Love after trading Aaron Rodgers to the New York Jets, Gutekunst’s list of priorities was perhaps impossibly long. He couldn’t get to everything, specifically a veteran kicker and reinforcements at safety.
Gutekunst trimmed money at what can be a luxury position for young teams not expected to contend, choosing not to re-sign Mason Crosby. He waited until the seventh round of the draft to address a glaring need at safety, meaning there would be a hole on the back end of the Packers defense. No biggie. This was a rebuilding year with Love.
A rookie kicker wasn’t going to be lining up for field goals in January with a potential Super Bowl run on the line. The Packers weren’t a blue-chip safety away from winning a championship.
Except, it turned out, they actually were.
LaFleur was right his team’s loss didn’t hinge on one kick, not only because this was more about offseason strategy, but also the explosive plays his safeties allowed on a night the Packers defense otherwise played well. There was safety Darnell Savage, dropping a potential pick-6 against Brock Purdy on the 49ers first drive. Again there was Savage, who declined to comment before leaving the postgame locker room, getting beat deep against 49ers tight end George Kittle on a 32-yard touchdown. Same play, there was safety Anthony Johnson Jr. – the rookie seventh-round pick – providing double coverage on 49ers receiver Brandon Aiyuk’s underneath route instead of helping cover Kittle deep.
Third-and-6 in the third quarter, there was safety Jonathan Owens allowing a wide-open catch to Kittle, then failing to tackle him in the open field before the tight end gained another 32 yards. One play later, there was Savage letting running back Christian McCaffrey run through his tackle for a 39-yard touchdown.
Kittle led the 49ers with 81 yards on his four catches. As the Packers move forward into their future now, the 49ers appear most directly in the way of Super Bowl contention. If not them, perhaps the Detroit Lions, whose offense got a major boost this season with rookie tight end Sam LaPorta.
It means getting better at safety this offseason, finding someone who can cover an elite tight end.
“He’s all right, man,” Owens said. “He tried to stiff arm me, but you’ve just got to get him down. It’s a want to, and it take everyone. Not just one person. If someone does miss – you never plan on missing – but if someone does miss, everyone running to the ball. That is what we tried to do.
“Yeah, it was tough, but it’s the NFL. Guys are going to make plays.”
Gutekunst should be lauded for how he built a roster, the NFL’s youngest chock-full of rookies and second-year players, that could make it this far, this fast. Nobody thought the Packers would be one of the NFL’s best teams in a season that was supposed to be a rebuild, but that’s where they finished. There’s no mistaking what the Packers are expected to do next season, a year in which they’ll return to their usual status as an NFC favorite. And there’s no uncertainty with what Gutekunst must do this spring for his team to get there.
It's the two things he didn’t do last spring: improve the kicking and safety positions.
“It’s tough to do it to these guys,” Carlson said. “That’s what hurts the worst. They’ve got a bright future ahead of them, but it definitely hurt.”
