Blair Walsh: Kicked Out

Blair Walsh has had a very tough year. He has still not gotten over his screw up last year, when he lost the playoff game for the Vikings. He has missed 8 kicks in 9 games this year. The last straw was apparently a missed extra point in Sunday’s loss to the Washington Redskins, Walsh's fourth missed field goal of the year. The Vikings released the kicker on November 15th, 2016.

A lot of kickers in history have been known to go downhill once they miss an important kick. A Wall Street Journal piece suggests Walsh isn’t alone in those struggles. In a story with the headline suggesting kickers have “post-traumatic miss disorder,” the Journal looks at seven other kickers in NFL history who have missed similarly important playoff kicks. It found that kickers who were 80.2 percent accurate for their careers before the big miss hit on just 65.5 percent of their field goals the following season

It was a very smart move on the Vikings part to let go of Walsh because he has been going downhill since last year and there didn’t seem to be a answer to why he has been doing so horrible. For a professional kicker, missing 8 kicks in 9 games is very disappointing and we shouldn’t be paying him to lose games for us. The new kicker hopefully will be able to actually get us some points.

“It was something we felt like we needed to do, kind of move forward,” Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said Wednesday, via Chris Tomasson of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “We’re all accountable for things we have to get done. I think we gave him a lot of opportunities. Although Blair’s a great kid and it’s hard to do, it’s just part of the business. . . . It just comes down to doing your job.”

His errors are believed to be mental, and not physical. People have said he just has the “yips”, but he is a professional and he should be able to get over it after a few games, but he hasn’t. He seems to know, he is not doing well and letting his entire team down. “That’s my fault, I need to come through for my team there,” he said.

The Vikings have added Kai Forbath as their replacement. He was a former kicker for Washington. Let’s hope this ends the issues in special teams the Vikings faced this season, and gives a push to the playoffs in the final quarter of the season.