A lot of people made fun of the Green Bay Packers for drafting a kicker, but there are two immutable facts about kickers.
- If you want to contend, you really do need a good kicker, or at least an average one, and,
- To have a kicker, you need to, uhm, acquire a kicker.
You can acquire a kicker like any other player via free agency, or as a UDFA, or through the draft. Free agency will require paying the kicker a lot of money for a kicker, and UDFA’s cannot necessarily be counted on. You shouldn’t trade into the second round to get a kicker as the Tampa Bay Bucs once did for Robert Aguayo, but spending a sixth-round pick on one seems fine.
The argument
against drafting kickers is similar to the argument against kickers generally. They’re barely football players; they only play a few snaps a game, they’re not nearly as manly and concussed as everyone else, and the difference between an average kicker and an elite kicker isn’t really THAT big. But it’s never that simple, and even though the range of kicker outcomes CAN be pretty small in terms of expected points added, kickers often find themselves in EXTREMELY high leverage situations. By Win Percentage Added, the difference can be quite stark. Just last year, Brandon McManus honked a PAT and a makeable field goal in a playoff game, the highest leverage situation you can have.
While you cannot expect any given kicker to outperform an average kicker year-to-year, the Packers haven’t had an average kicker since Mason Crosby. If Trey Smack is just average, that’s already an enormous baseline upgrade, but there’s a good chance he’s more than that strictly based on leg power. McManus hit a fair share of kicks over 50 yards during his tenure (6 for 8), but outside of the mile-high air of Denver, his power was average. Smack seems to have a huge leg, as he put on a show in the preseason in Denver, and more impressively, hit two 58-yarders (one of which was negated by a penalty) in Pittsburgh.
Kicking power isn’t ALL that matters, but it opens up new scoring opportunities and, importantly, can replace some of your Hail Marys. Hail Mary throws are a 10% proposition at best, and turning a few of those into 50/50 long field goal tries in high-leverage moments can be game-altering.
Trey Smack has yet to play a down in the NFL, but all he has to do to be the best Packer kicker in years is to be average. And maybe he won’t be, but his physical tools appear excellent, and with McManus, the Packers didn’t have a ceiling OR floor. Daniel Whelan has basically solved their punting issues, and if they can actually hit some clutch kicks, they may have a net positive special teams performance for the first time in ages.
