Greg Joseph Looking Solid

Have the Vikings FINALLY solved their problem at the kicker position?

As anyone who follows the Vikings is aware of, the team has had an…….issue…….at the kicker position since………..I dunno, a really long time ago. We really haven’t had a consistent kicker since Ryan Longwell, and he left after the 2011 season. Initially, it appeared that Blair Walsh was going to be the answer, but after a stellar rookie season in 2012 and an above average sophomore campaign in 2013, he had a down year in 2014, then bounced back in the 2015 regular season, but nobody remembers the regular season, because who can forget what happened in the 2015 wild card round? Yeah, me either.

After that kick, Walsh never recovered. He kicked for a couple more years, but eventually kicked his way out of the NFL.

Since then, the team has brought in numerous kickers, and all have faltered. They brought in Forbath (couldn’t make a PAT), then they drafted a great kicker in Daniel Carlson but cut him after he missed 3 field goals against the Packers in the season opener (whoops, maybe jumped the gun on cutting him), then they brought in Dan Bailey, who was one of the most accurate kickers in NFL history until he came here, then he withered and was cut after the 2020 season and hasn’t found a new kicking job since.

The team brought in Greg Joseph last year to replace Bailey, he won the job, and although he didn’t put up gawdy numbers, he was a pretty good kicker, which is a vast improvement over what the team has had for a very long time. Yeah, he missed the game winner against Arizona, but he also hit the game winner from way downtown against Detroit, and he did have a pretty good year overall. He made 33 field goals out of 38 attempts for a 86.8% success rate, and he made 90% of his PATs (36 out of 40). As far as kicking, Joseph’s 86.8% is slightly above the league average, which was 85.1% in 2021, and Joseph was asked to kick a LOT of long field goals. Nearly half of his field goal attempts (18 out of his 38 total attempts) were from beyond 40 yards. The scouting report coming in was that Joseph was solid under 50, but inconsistent from beyond 50. He’s proven those reports wrong thus far, as he hit 7 of 9 from beyond 50 last year (he was also 7 of 9 from 40 – 49 yards). The PATs are a bit of a concern, as his 90% was slightly below the league average of 93.4% in 2021.

According to news coming out of training camp, Joseph is looking solid.

Let’s hope he can keep it up and improve on last year’s numbers. It would be nice to FINALLY find some consistency at the kicker position, and Joseph has proven that he can hit the long one in clutch situations.