The Rams’ search for a kicker to replace Greg Zuerlein has not exactly been easy. They’ve turned over stones at just about every level of football, bringing in one kicker each from the CFL, XFL and college.
The mostly virtual offseason prevented the Rams from truly evaluating Lirim Hajrullahu, Austin MacGinnis and Sam Sloman before training camp, condensing the window to only a few short weeks. And you can bet the Rams are going to use just about every grain of sand in the hourglass before picking their kicker for the 2020 season.
With restrictions on what can and can’t be reported out of training camp, it’s hard to get a feel for which kicker has the lead in this race. Sean McVay hasn’t even indicated that one has pulled ahead when talking to the media. He said Wednesday that the team is going to take as long as it can to decide, indicating the competition will go right up to final cuts on Sept. 5.
“That’s a really important part of what we’re evaluating right now. All three guys bring certain things to the table. That’s another thing – it’s how many different pressure situations can you try to create in these practice settings to truly evaluate guys that are younger players? You’ve got a rookie and some other guys that don’t have a whole lot of experience at this level, but I think they’ve done a nice job. Coach (John) Bonamego has been excellent leading the way for them. … We’ll see if one of these guys starts to really separate themselves from the other two.”
McVay won’t rule anything out at this point, either. He didn’t shoot down the possibility of stashing an extra kicker on the practice squad, considering the NFL has increased the number of players a team can carry on its practice squad to 16.
“That’s a possibility, it’s something you can look into just given the fact that they’re expanding the practice squad rosters,” he said. “Those will be decisions we’re certainly not in a rush to make and we’re going to use every day that we have to really evaluate them.”
The fourth-year coach wouldn’t even guarantee that the Rams will only keep one kicker on the 53-man roster, leaving the door open for the possibility of retaining two of the three when the regular season begins – one for kickoffs and one for field goals.
Of course, the Rams would prefer to have a kicker who can do both, and McVay acknowledged that in his response.
“That’s always a part of the consideration,” McVay said of possibly keeping two kickers. “I think the ideal approach is to be able to have a guy that can do both. Just because of how minimal, even though you have the ability to have 48 guys up this year on the game-day roster, you want to be able to try to have that guy be able to do both, unless you’re in a situation when your punter ends up kicking off. We’ll let Hekker continue to be the best at what he’s doing with punting and holding.”
It seemed Hajrullahu pulled ahead slightly in the team’s scrimmage on Saturday after making all five of his kicks in the exhibition game. MacGinnis went 4-for-5, while Sloman lagged behind with a 3-for-5 showing.
However, in Wednesday’s practice, Hajrullahu missed two field goal attempts, which made the competition even more interesting.
The Rams haven’t committed to one kicker yet and they may not until they trim their roster, but time is running out for them to pick someone to replace Zuerlein.