Often times, the relationship between the kicker and his holder is overlooked in terms of how it affects the kicker’s accuracy. If the kicker misses the field goal or makes it, he alone tends to get the blame or the credit.
Sometimes it is flatly his fault if he misses and certainly if he makes it, he deserves credit. But the bond between him and his holder is an important one. One that needs work.
That relationship is one that Raiders fans once took for granted. After all, they watched the duo of Sebastian Janikowski and Shane Lechler for 13 years. Then Lechler left to sign with the Houston Texans and Janikowski stuck around, but with a new holder.
That year, with Marquette King as his holder, Janikowski had a field goal percentage of just 70%, which was his lowest since the last time he had a new holder — his rookie year.
Now look at what happened with Daniel Carlson. He joined the Raiders midway through the 2018 season and missed just one field goal that season, including hitting 15-straight. Then he gets a new holder last season in AJ Cole and his average drops to 73.1%.
Clearly holders matter. Or rather the kicker/holder combo matters.
After that rough season that saw Carlson miss both of his kicks from outside 50 yards and five more kicks inside 50 yards, the combo obviously needed a lot of work. Some favorable geography helped that along.
“He was training and living in Alabama a couple hours from me,” Carlson said of Cole, “so we were able to drive together and meet up and train in Alabama as well as some in Vegas before, just doing that smart during COVID and stuff. So, it’s been nice to kind of have that preparation. Obviously this offseason was weird, it was a lot different than normal, so we wanted to take measures into our own hands and make sure we were prepared from day one and continue to build off the relationship we had last year and kind of are continuing this year.”
Let’s be clear here, this is not shifting the blame to the holder for these missed kicks. It’s bigger than that. This isn’t a matter of the holder messing up the hold. And in most cases, it’s not something that would show up on film, like ‘laces out!’ or something like that. AJ Cole explains:
“I think one of the goals for us is to have the best battery in all of football. WE do a lot of communication about what the wind’s doing, what line Daniel’s going to be playing, and how he wants the hold. It’s gotten to the point where at times it’s unspoken and we just kind of like Daniel just starts to say it and I’m like ‘yup, got it.’ We’ve done a great job I think really getting a lot of reps from a little over a year ago when I got here all the way through now, working together all offseason through the OTA period we could’ve had and through training camp. We’ve really improved our relationship and there’s a lot of things that don’t need to be said. I have a lot of confidence in him and I think he has a lot of confidence in me and I think that us having that relationship really helps translate to results on the field.”
Cole is the punter, but thus far this season, he’s been a holder a lot more than he’s been the punter. He’s held for a field goal or extra point 29 times this season compared to just 11 times taking the field as a punter.
Obviously, that’s good news for the Raiders as it means their offense is scoring points nearly three times as often as their drives are stalling. It also shows just how important holding is to the job.
Cole has been a pretty good punter. Currently, he’s averaging 45.8 yards per punt, which is right about the same as he did last season (46). While he’s helping his kicking partner convert on 91.7% of his field goal attempts including three from outside 50 yards. High time that part of his game is recognized.
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