the.com/placekicker
The guy who touches the ball twice a game and gets blamed for everything.
means A football specialist who kicks the ball off a stationary spot on the ground — for field goals, extra points, and kickoffs — rather than catching and running it.
from A straightforward compound: 'place' (as in placement, the ball set at a fixed spot) plus 'kicker.' It distinguishes this specialist from a 'drop-kicker,' the older style — once common in early football and rugby — where the kicker bounced the ball off the ground before striking it. As the drop kick faded from the game through the 20th century, 'placekicker' became the standard term for the ball-on-a-spot specialist.
- origin
- Started as part-time soccer players recruited for their leg
- career length
- Often outlasts quarterbacks by a decade
- pressure math
- Nobody remembers the 30 makes, everyone remembers the miss
- roster oddity
- Routinely the lightest player on the team by far