The Importance Of A Kicker In American Football

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What is the importance of a Kicker in American Football? To answer the question of a kicker’s importance to a football team, a person must first know the reason why a kicker, or punter, is a position. Most of the positions, like the kicking position, and rules of football came from the English game of rugby which uses the place kicking and drop kick method in order to get the ball down the field or to receive a few extra points. The United States adopted and modernized the positions and rules of rugby in order to create football as the American sport. At first, the kicking duties went to anyone on the football team who could kick which was usually by running straight into the ball or catching and dropping the ball for a drop kick. This method …show more content…

The defense also has many chances to stop a drive by the offense which also means that players get many chances to prove themselves. Then there is the kicker who has one job and one chance to prove to the coaches that they deserve another shot. If the same treatment was given to every player they would probably have to pull a player of the fowls on every play. Coach Shelton told me about his personal experiences saying “I remember during my sophomore year trying out for punter and my 1st punt was a shank left. The coach yelled at me, "that's enough of that, go back to the wide receiver’s." I was shocked that he could make a decision based on 1 attempt. I later was given the job based on having to kick during free time while trying to convince them that I could do it. We rarely ever kicked extra points. I remember asking 1 game, "Why don't we ever kick a pat?" My coach looked at me and said, ”We might not convert, and then we'd be behind." I would estimate that we failed to convert on nearly 75% of our 2 point tries. Yet we lined up again and again for another try all season. On our PATs that we attempted, we only missed 2 all year and both were blocked due to poor

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