Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker’s troubles with extra points returned during the AFC’s divisional round, but this time it was a different issue causing the problem.
During the regular season, Butker missed a total of six PATs but hadn’t missed once since Week 9. Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub blamed those issues on the weather in some cases or even Butker “toeing the ball.” This time around they’ve identified the issue as an “operational glitch.”
“Had nothing with what happened earlier,” Toub told reporters on Thursday. “It was an operational glitch that we had with the rotation of the ball; the laces came down in a weird spot. Not one time all year did that happen or in practice for that matter and it happened twice and both of those kicks we rotated a different way. It was just an operational glitch that we cleaned it up, he had a great week of practice and he was on point this week so we’re good.”
Toub shared a great amount of detail about why this kick failed and how they’ve gone about correcting it in this particular situation.
“(James) Winchester is so good as a snapper, he can count the rotations with his snap where the laces never appear for him for the hold, but in this case the laces appeared,” Toub explained. “Now there was a combination with the weather and a little bit short, whatever we did there, we figured it out this week. The laces showed up to where they were facing (Harrison) Butker and then Tommy (Townsend) has to deal with getting them out of the way which is a matter of which way we’re going to rotate the ball so rotated to where Butker could see the laces for a longer period of time. That’s not what we want to do so we want to rotate it the opposite way, so it goes away. I didn’t want to get real technical with it, but I guess you forced me to, but that’s really what it is. Like I said, it’s just an operational thing that we got ironed out and fixed.”
In layman’s terms, the laces were the wrong spot when the ball got to the holder, then the holder spun the ball the long way to account for it. If you’ve ever seen the film “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” you know that kickers always want the laces facing out and away from them.
Butker explained why it’s important, specifically for him, to have the laces in the right spot. But he also shouldered the blame as well because he’s trained for the ways that he can adjust to overcome issues with the laces and otherwise.
“So every kicker is different, but for me I’m looking at the ground, the spot basically where the holders going to put the ball and then once the ball’s down my eyes normally raise up to look at the sweet spot of the ball so in a perfect world that ball is still so I can just hone in on the sweet spot and swing away,” Butker said on Thursday. “If the laces are a little bit off, then the ball’s going to be moving, but I’ve been very fortunate to have such a great operation the past couple months, past couple weeks so that in a game when the ball is moving, I didn’t handle it well and that’s on me because I do practice that during the week. Since our operation is so good, I do practice seeing bad laces, seeing the ball moving because at the end of the day, as a kicker, if the ball’s on the ground it’s your job to make the kicks so when that balls moving or whatever or if it’s perfectly still, you got to make the kick. We got a lot of good reps this week, and as I said as a kicker, you got to be able to handle everything no matter what.”
Both Toub and Butker believe this is a quick fix and something that they’ve already accounted for in this practice week leading up to the AFC Championship Game against the Buffalo Bills. As the stakes get higher in the playoffs, this unit will want things to be airtight.
“Yeah definitely, I mean we’re not going to try and reinvent the wheel,” Butker said. “I think there are some minor adjustments we can all make, and we’re focused in for this next AFC Championship game and the biggest thing is just learning from past mistakes and correcting it and getting better and moving on.”
[listicle id=86097]