How hard is placekicking?

[MuresanForMVP]

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it's pretty cool how you assume that because NFL kickers miss all these fields goals that you could do it yourself and not that kicking field goals is really [censored] hard.

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I thought you were a gimmick account at first glance. guess not...

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placekicking is largely about hitting the ball right. look at soccer players. they rarely look like weighlifters, they can just kick through the ball with great speed and at the right spot. I do think there are literally hundreds and hundreds of players in pro European soccer who could be (easily) trained to be NFL kickers or punters. but these are all incredible athletes who happen to have the right body/skills.



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He was probably exaggerating somewhat but Morten Andersen claimed in a danish interview that most soccer players here on a reasonable high level could become really good kickers.

But I mean it can't be that easy or simple can it? It's not like decent american soccer players are worse than decent european or south american ones AND you make a lot more as an nfl kicker than as an american soccer player. You would think then the market would be flooded with ordinary soccer players turned into or trying to turn into great kickers.
Maybe it is??
This is one subject I don't know a whole lot about really. After he has become well known here I've heard at least the first ten of my soccer playing friends claim they could probably do what he does....

[kyleb]

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My PAT % was around 80% which was fairly standard, especially since we ran 2pt conversion for the most part.


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Explain plzkthx before my head explodes.

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Small sample size PAT kicking - bad explanation. Pretty sure I wasn't an 80% kicker in high school.

[Daniel Snyder]

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I was always the first or second pick in kickball.

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Good enough for me, come on in to camp.

[jah7_fsu1]

OP: I completely agree, given what you have, you could be a star kicker.

I'm smart, (all A's in college) pretty strong for my size, and have fairly decent sized arms. I can also throw a spiral...do you think I can make it as an NFL quarterback? I also was the first pick in most touch football games, plus I hold the Number Munchers high score from sixth grade.

It can't be that hard...those guys make so much dough! Those QB's ALL have incompletions. I can throw at LEAST as many incompletions as they can.

I was class president, and drove a Plymouth Sundance in high school.

If you need more details about my life or reasons why I think I'm better than the majority of NFL quarterbacks please PM me.

[selurah]

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I was always the first or second pick in kickball.

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Good enough for me, come on in to camp.

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You sure you can afford him?

[Edge34]

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In my struggles to make money(fu 25NL), I realized I had strong legs.

Since high school, the girls have praised my strong, athletic, powerful legs; since I was wearing baseball pants. My buttocks were a main attraction too. We had to go to my small school in our uniforms.

Either way, I had a LOT of power playing baseball. I was 5'7" and a half, and routinely hit balls off the fence, and home runs during games. I attribute that to my trunk. Not "trunk", but trunk as in abdomen, back, and thighs.

Recently, I thought, I can [censored] kick! These guys miss all these field goals. I can at LEAST miss as many as them! I never played soccer, but I was always the first or second pick in kickball. I once did a leg press of 800 lbs. when I was in shape.

My question- How hard would it be for me to become a placekicker in the NFL? Possibly starting in the AFL. The league minimum is more than 5% of the American public. If I trained rigorously, and got a tryout(I have connections in the sports world), could I at least make the practice team before the season starts? I've never kicked a field goal in my life, and I kicked a couple kickoffs in pop warner.

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I've kicked in high school and college.

I know 5 players who are currently working 9-to-5's and training DREAMING of one day getting a tryout. They have played high school and college as kickers and it is their physical specialization.

You have precisely ZERO chance of making a team, assuming you're serious. There are hundreds of guys out there hoping to get a shot. Unless you devoted pretty much your entire life to catching up - going to camps, training every single day to somehow get more flexible, faster, and stronger. Even then, kickers don't even know the meaning of the words job security.

Kb4Z is pretty much right in all he's said. A lot of it is natural talent. But people look at it and say its easy, and then don't realize how hard it is to kick that weird ball a mere 155 feet (or less!) consistently.

[bellytimber]

I've played competitive soccer my whole life. One summer maybe ten of us were playing smallball somewhere, and then someone grabbed a football out of their their car and we ended up goofing around for an hour betting each other on how well we could placekick.

Our LDO conclusion: Placekicking well is super hard, and the experts are insanely good. 30yrd FGs were not gimmes. 40yrd FGs were small miracles. Only one person there could hit from 50 with any sort of reliability. And the whole group was made up of lifelong soccer players, everyone there had played for their college team or professionally.

We had all the advantages--no game pressure, no jumping jack defenses, no snap, no rush, no Romo. We did try to take some of the kicks at angles, which makes it about 900 times harder. The goalposts were probably high-school width, i.e. as favorable as possible.

Yes, pure leg strength is a part of the equation, but dude it's a small part. Just like lumberjack axe swingers don't win golfing long-drive contests, weightroom heroes aren't stealing all the world's kicking jobs. Kicking a ball far and accurately has way more to do with timing: Dozens of moving parts speeding towards a hundredth of a second when they will all try to synchronize into a milimeter...and then they have to do it again and again, in the scariest situations.

BTW, the guy who could hit the 50yrd FGs has been able to crush a soccer ball ever since he was ten...and this guy weighs 160 lbs maybe on Jupiter.

[mbillie1]

As long as OP signs with the Gmen he will almost certainly be an improvement, so I'm all for it.

[sixfour]

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I do think there are literally hundreds and hundreds of players in pro European soccer who could be (easily) trained to be NFL kickers or punters.

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Probably rugby would be a better example, as they actually do things more comparable. Gavin Hastings (ex-Scotland captain) kicked in NFL Europe for a season.