As they prepare to take on the Lions today, the 1-4 Jaguars are setting bad NFL precedent in a special teams sense. New kicker Jon Brown, promoted from the practice squad, is the fifth kicker Jacksonville has put on the field this season. The Jaguars’ other kickers have experienced bad luck usually experienced only by Spinal Tap drummers or Trump campaign managers.
Josh Lambo is on injured reserve with a hip issue. Brandon Wright has a groin injury. Stephen Hauschka has a knee problem, and Aldrick Rosas has hip and groin injuries. So, the Jaguars have Jon Brown as their fifth guy. Per ESPN, Brown makes the Jaguars the only team in NFL history to have a different player attempt a field goal or point after touchdown in each of their first five games of a season.
“I can’t remember anything like this,” Jaguars head coach Doug Marrone said this week. “I don’t think anyone has been though anything like this as far as the people here, whether it’s [special-teams coordinator] Joe DeCamillis, [assistant special-teams coordinator] Mike Mallory or any of the other coaches.
“… Unfortunately a lot of the other players that we’ve had have been injured or have gotten injured, which is crazy in that regard.”
Indeed. What’s even more crazy is that Brown has never attempted a kick of any kind in a regular-season game. Brown was more of a soccer player growing up — he started playing that spot at age four, became a premier teenage player, and played at Louisville in college. When he did try to kick an American football, people were intrigued.
“He literally had no idea about the technique to kick a football,” said Baer, who kicked for Louisiana in college. “He was just like, ‘Yeah, I think I’ll give it a shot.’ For him to be able to flip the switch like that, nowadays, it just doesn’t happen.”
Brett Baer, a kicking coach who spent time with the Rams, was in charge of getting Brown up to speed.
“We had to start from step one,” Baer said in 2018, “and I had to kind of explain to him what a field goal was.”
After a chat about the basics, per Courier-Journal.com, Brown took three steps back, two over and then kicked for the first time.
“I was like, ‘Holy crap, man,'” Baer said. “He just crushed it. Just the most powerful kick that I’ve ever seen, the way the ball exploded off his foot.”
The Bengals signed Brown to their practice squad as an undrafted free agent in 2018, but he never made a kick in the regular season. There is evidence, however, of a 55-yard field goal in the preseason against the Cowboys.
Brown can make history in another sense — per this report, he can become the sixth Black kicker in pro football history to attempt a regular-season kick at that designated position.