The Packers have both a new special teams coordinator and a new kicker. Naturally, one is going to get questions about the other. And since the new kicker most recently did the bulk of the kicking in the historically balmy state of Florida, people want to know whether or not he can make the transition to kicking in the much more temperate climate of Green Bay, Wisconsin.
For his part, special teams coordinator Cam Achord isn’t worried.
“For me, personally, I think there’s more made of it than it is,”
he said of the difficulty of kicking in the cold. “I mean, just think of the history here, right? Ryan Longwell, Oregon, Cal. Pretty good here, right? Mason Crosby, Texas, Colorado. Pretty good here.”
To his point, Longwell and Crosby weren’t exactly kicking in Florida, but both did manage the Wisconsin temperatures well enough to carve out long careers for the Packers — though, in fairness, Longwell ultimately fled for indoor kicking in Minnesota.
But is the question even worth asking to begin with? Should we worry at all about kickers battling the cold? Or was Achord just going to say that because coaches are going to defend their guys, no matter what?
The data shows Achord’s got a point.
Over the past 10 years, kickers league-wide have converted 83.96% of their kicks in outdoor games when the kickoff temperature is 36 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. When the temperature is 35 degrees or lower at kickoff, field goal percentage does drop, but only slightly. The league-wide conversion rate is just 83.55% in colder games.
At Lambeau Field, specifically, the numbers are even more unusual. In warmer games (36 degrees or higher at kickoff) the conversion rate on field goals over the last decade is 81.55%, but in cold-weather games, the conversion rate is 86.32%.
To me, this seems like a selection question more than an ability question. It’s not a matter of whether or not kickers can handle the cold; teams kicking in the cold (especially at Lambeau Field) likely already assume that their kickers can’t convert from as far away, leading to higher percentages in the cold (or at least, not as low as you’d assume on a league-wide basis).
If Trey Smack can kick at all, then he can probably kick fine enough to get the job done in the cold. The job doesn’t appear to be all that different. And if anything is different, it’s probably that he won’t be kicking from as far away in cold weather as he would be in normal circumstances. For right now, hold off on worries about cold weather kicking for the Packers’ newest kicking project.
Besides, plummeting temperatures are a long way away, and outdoor stadiums are becoming an endangered species. That won’t help him at Lambeau Field playoff games, but if the Packers just resolve to only score touchdowns, that’ll solve that problem anyway.
