Katson: The Loneliness of the Left-Footed Kicker
The NFL Combine this year has an unusual attendee: a left-footed kicker. Why are those so rare and are there challenges to this dynamic? Alex Katson talked to Pitts' Ben Sauls to find out.
The NFL Combine is an isolating experience for every player. The week of rigorous interviews, medical checks, and on-field workouts pits each prospect against their peers — but also against history. Fail to reach an arm length benchmark or an athletic testing threshold, and suddenly your professional prospects plummet. Check in with a staggering frame and a blazing 40 time, and you’ll find yourself shooting up draft boards.
For specialists, the isolation is magnified. The acoustics in an empty Lucas Oil Stadium amplify the sound of every ball coming off every foot as the prospects test for scouts behind what might as well be closed doors. Media interviews are scarce as the credentialed masses flock to the defensive line and linebacker groups that arrive on the same day.
One specialist this year will take that loneliness a step further. Not only will he be part of the smallest position group, working out in an empty dome with the sound of his kicks reverberating off the 2014 AFC Finalist banner hanging high in the rafters.
He’ll also be the first player of his kind to participate in the event in seventeen years.
Pittsburgh kicker Ben Sauls is the first left-footed kicker to be invited to the event since Wisconsin kicker Taylor Mehlhaff and Louisville kicker Art Carmody in 2008 — when Sauls was 7 years old. Mehlhaff played in three career NFL games for the Saints, all in his rookie season, before signing with the Vikings in 2009.
He failed to make the final 53-man roster and is now a private kicking coach whose most notable client is former Jaguars kicker and Urban Meyer kicking victim Josh Lambo. Carmody was never signed to an NFL contract and played three seasons in the Arena Football League from 2008-10. He is now the kicking coach for Division III Centenary College in Louisiana.
To say the history of the NFL Combine is littered with stories like this implies that it happens often, which it decidedly does not. But of the lefties invited to the event, hardly any have succeeded.
UCLA kicker Justin Medlock, 2007: a fifth-round selection by the Chiefs who won the job as a rookie for exactly one week. Spent time with the Rams, Washington, Lions, Panthers, and Raiders in between CFL stints, appearing in just 11 career NFL games. He did make the CFL All-Decade team, though.
Oklahoma kicker Tim Duncan, 2002: played in 5 career NFL games for the Cardinals in mop-up duty for Martin Gramatica. Duncan is now a drilling consultant for an Oklahoma-based oil and natural gas company.
BYU kicker Owen Pochman, 2001: drafted in the seventh round by the Patriots. He played in 16 career NFL games for the Giants and 49ers. One of his top results on Google is this YouTube video asking if he was the worst NFL kicker of all time. Somehow he parlayed this into dating Baywatch star Brande Roderick and is now a realtor in Los Angeles.
Florida State kicker Sebastian Janikowski, 2000: the coolest fucking guy ever.
Okay, but notoriously few kickers are invited to the NFL Combine. This year, Sauls is one of four. Surely, there are lefty kickers who have carved another path to NFL success.
The left-footed players not invited to the Combine to make a field goal since Janikowski entered the league in 2000: Morten Andersen, John Kasay, Joe Nedney, David Akers, Bill Gramatica, Micah Knorr (who is a punter), Wes Welker (who is a wide receiver), Ricky Schmitt, Giorgio Tavecchio, and Jamie Gillan (who is a punter).
Andersen entered the league in 1982, five years before the NFL Combine even existed. Kasay, Nedney, and Akers were probably not invited to the Combine, but data from before 2000 is sparse.
Regardless, combine that ten-man list with the five (Janikowski, Pochman, Duncan, Medlock, and Mehlhaff) that were definitely invited to the Combine and you have 15 lefty kickers who have made a field goal since 2000.
The total number of players to make a field goal during that time frame is 181, making the share of left-footed field goal makers just 8.28%. And again, three of those guys aren’t even kickers!
But take a look at some of the names on this list. Andersen is second all-time in made field goals. Kasay is seventh, Janikowski eleventh, Akers eighteenth. Despite making up only less than 10% of all players to make a field goal in the last 25 years, lefties make up 20% of the top 20 in the all-time record books.
Thus sets the stage Sauls will walk onto when he appears at the Combine next week. Regarded as one of the best kicking prospects in the draft after making 21-of-24 field goals, 6-of-7 from over 50 yards, and 44-of-44 extra points in 2024, the Pitt senior bolstered his case with the best all-star week of the four kickers invited to the Combine.
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