Kicked To The Curb

[TheGreyCupTDChicken]

Paul Osbaldiston, Dave Ridgeway, Bob Cameron, Troy Westwood, Hank Ilesic, Sean Flemming , Lou Pasaglia, Mark McLoughlin, these are the names of some of the great kickers through the 80's, 90's and the early 2000's.  Whether they were place kicking, punting or taking the boot on the kick off these players were staples on their respective teams for a decade or more.  Some pulled double duty, some were Canadian ALL were clutch.  That fact explains both their longevity in the league and their ability to stick with their individual clubs for so very long.

These days  I look at the landscape of the special teams in todays  CFL and specifically the kickers and I find a couple  of questions.  Where has the loyalty from the teams to the kickers and where is the quality in the kicking game gone?  I think obviously one question answers the other.  GM's seem less content to allow kickers to work through a bad season and wheel and deal them quickly out of town.  But what's the answer to the other question?  How did we go from the quality the kickers provided in the early 80's all the way up to the mid-2o00's with one kicker handing down or should I say "footing" down the knowledge and abilty to another to what we have now?

  Get a load of this; starting from the end of last season Edmonton sent Noel Prefontaine BACK  to Toronton. Which caused Toronto to jetison Justin Medloc to Hamilton.  Hamilton in turn released Sandro DeAngelis where Montreal signed him following The Als cutting their Grey Cup winning kicker Damon Duval.  Who now as of today has made his way to Edmonton.  I have never before seen a chain reaction like this at the kicking postion.   In fact I can't even remember any trade, release, pickup domino effect like this at any postion in The CFL ever! 

So it's happened, what now?  Will teams continue to recycle kickers?   Is the simple fact that almost every team held one of those super kickers for so long that we were bound to slump once they all moved on?  Do we just chalk it up to the seemingly cyclical nature of the game?  Or is there something else that has changed, some rule that has adversly affected the kicking game making it more difficult to be consistent?  Is it a lack of patience by GM's to stick by a player impossibly holding them up to standards left behind by the aforementioned greats?  I think all these reasons play a part in the kicking carosel, what's your take?

[Randy Brule]

I don't have an answer than to say I can't understand it either...

Great post, BTW.

[Hambone]

Could be another product of a cap system. The NFL turns over kickers fast too. It's like they view the kicking position as a place to buy cap space. Every year you see NFL teams casting aside a fairly reliable veteran kicker in favour of a younger (read cheaper) unproven alternative. Sometimes it works. Quite often though by Week 4 they find themselves scouring the scrapheap to recycle another vet when the youngster falters a bit under the lights of primetime. Kickers have become the ultimate "what have you done for me lately" whipping boys in pro football.

[Ravi Ramkissoonsingh]

I would argue that kickers today are better than ever but the expectations of them are higher than ever.  If you look at a Hall-of-Famer like Dave Cutler, was his FG % even 70% for his career?  Today, kickers in the CFL are expected to make at least 80% of their kicks per season.  If you go back even 15 years, 70-75% was considered to be very good.

Also, I believe that we are going through a period where there is a surplus of good kickers.  For example, Jamie Boreham is a competent punter and perhaps the best kickoff specialist in the league but he can't find work this year.  Some teams such as Toronto and B.C. have promising kickers waiting in the wings while the all-time leader in FG accuracy, Sandro DeAngelis, can't even crack the roster in Montreal.