Carlson

[Pckfn23]

Of course they are treating a rookie with confidence issues differently than a seasoned veteran who doesn't need to take all the kicks in camp. That's the right thing to do at this point. That changes in about a month though. That is when it starts becoming a personnel issue.

[YoHoChecko]

Of course they are treating a rookie with confidence issues differently than a seasoned veteran who doesn't need to take all the kicks in camp. That's the right thing to do at this point. That changes in about a month though. That is when it starts becoming a personnel issue.

It's impressive confirmation bias to see cutting the in-house competition, a lack of any observable action to create competition, and countless public statements about his long-term role for the team and not consider it evidence of commitment to the player.

[Pckfn23]

Of course they are treating a rookie with confidence issues differently than a seasoned veteran who doesn't need to take all the kicks in camp. That's the right thing to do at this point. That changes in about a month though. That is when it starts becoming a personnel issue.

It's impressive confirmation bias to see cutting the in-house competition, a lack of any observable action to create competition, and countless public statements about his long-term role for the team and not consider it evidence of commitment to the player.

I absolutely see that as commitment to him, however I don't see it as unwavering and unalterable commitment for the season. The Packers are trying to set him up for success, if he doesn't find success, the commitment may very well change.

[williewasgreat]

Don't forget that Crosby was kicking in the Green Bay climate in November-January. This would negatively impact the stats of most any kicker.

I have heard the excuse that Crosby kicking in Lambeau led to him having worse stats than other kickers. You need to realize that since 2007 all opposing kickers combined (82.8%, 38.48 yards) have made a higher percentage of field goals at Green Bay from a larger average distance than Crosby (81.8%, 37.87 yards) despite not being used to kick at the stadium.

That's just another indicator he wasn't all that good in the first place.

These stats are statistically insignificant. 1% and about a half yard? To me, they basically state there is little if any difference in Crosby and the other team's kickers at Green Bay since 2007. Therefore, my premise would be that all kickers struggled to kick in Green Bay, or more probably, Green Bay is a tough place to kick the football.

[packman114]

The trouble for fans with kickers is we can only focus on results. For all we know the coaching staff has made some changes/corrections to Carlson's mechanics and using training camp to prepare him for the season. They may be looking at the film and see he is making progress but not consistent yet, so bringing in competition only reduces the reps he gets to perfect the new process.

If it's not mechanical and more mental then I think 23 is right and they are waiting til the last preseason game to see if he overcomes it. Since apparently Green Bay is the only cold outdoor stadium where all kickers suck, we won't know for sure if Carlson is the guy until the cold weather comes around.

[Crazylegs Starks]

Don't forget that Crosby was kicking in the Green Bay climate in November-January. This would negatively impact the stats of most any kicker.

I have heard the excuse that Crosby kicking in Lambeau led to him having worse stats than other kickers. You need to realize that since 2007 all opposing kickers combined (82.8%, 38.48 yards) have made a higher percentage of field goals at Green Bay from a larger average distance than Crosby (81.8%, 37.87 yards) despite not being used to kick at the stadium.

That's just another indicator he wasn't all that good in the first place.

These stats are statistically insignificant. 1% and about a half yard? To me, they basically state there is little if any difference in Crosby and the other team's kickers at Green Bay since 2007. Therefore, my premise would be that all kickers struggled to kick in Green Bay, or more probably, Green Bay is a tough place to kick the football.

The "little if any difference" is the problem. If Crosby is a "good" kicker, shouldn't he have a statistical advantage over the 16 years of opponents we've faced, opponents who at most play 3 times a year here?

[Crazylegs Starks]

I should amend that to 2 times a year. I don't think any opponent has ever done preseason+regular+playoff games at Lambeau

[Ghost_Lombardi]

Of course they are treating a rookie with confidence issues differently than a seasoned veteran who doesn't need to take all the kicks in camp. That's the right thing to do at this point. That changes in about a month though. That is when it starts becoming a personnel issue.

It's impressive confirmation bias to see cutting the in-house competition, a lack of any observable action to create competition, and countless public statements about his long-term role for the team and not consider it evidence of commitment to the player.

I absolutely see that as commitment to him, however I don't see it as unwavering and unalterable commitment for the season. The Packers are trying to set him up for success, if he doesn't find success, the commitment may very well change.

He's our K until we release him.

There's no reason to get into a Kicker's head with anything less than the message that he's our man. It is like when a GM says a player is not available for trade and then trades him a half hour later.

[Yoop]

Don't forget that Crosby was kicking in the Green Bay climate in November-January. This would negatively impact the stats of most any kicker.

I have heard the excuse that Crosby kicking in Lambeau led to him having worse stats than other kickers. You need to realize that since 2007 all opposing kickers combined (82.8%, 38.48 yards) have made a higher percentage of field goals at Green Bay from a larger average distance than Crosby (81.8%, 37.87 yards) despite not being used to kick at the stadium.

That's just another indicator he wasn't all that good in the first place.

These stats are statistically insignificant. 1% and about a half yard? To me, they basically state there is little if any difference in Crosby and the other team's kickers at Green Bay since 2007. Therefore, my premise would be that all kickers struggled to kick in Green Bay, or more probably, Green Bay is a tough place to kick the football.

exactly, the difference between a 81% kicker and a 85% kicker is insignificant unless that kicker misses game deciding kicks, that has not been the Mason Crosby MO actually Mason has been clutch.

and all this angst over Carlson struggles is also over blown, in every interview he has never come off as a player struggling with confidence, he came out, said whats wrong and knows how to fix it, maybe a little patience is in order.

[salmar80]

6 pages on a kicker...

We're almost in midseason form.

[RingoCStarrQB]

6 pages on a kicker...

We're almost in midseason form.

Well, when you have a potential head case kicker on the roster, JustJeff's Packers Discussion board goes in to high gear. Emphasis on the word "potential" as some of this kit shicking could be due to factors unrelated to this kickers head.

[texas]

We didn't have to wait for Crosby. He came out in preseason and kicked the longest FG in the history of Heinz Field, and then in his first NFL game he kicked a game winner under pressure, in addition to a 53 yarder in that game. He was good from the start.

Carlson is not good from the start.

Crosby wasn't good from the start as he finished 24th out of 31 qualifying kickers during his rookie season in 2007.

Finished 24th out of 31 for what?

The thing about Crosby's "low" FG percentages throughout his career is that we generally gave him tougher kicks, like I remember that one really bad season he had, most of his misses were from 50+ and barely missed. Plus the random 5 missed FG games he would have brought down the numbers in general.

Crosby ranks only 53rd out of 61 kickers with at least 100 attempts in field goal percentage since 2007. Over that period he has the 31st highest average distance of attempts. Therefore he wasn't put in more difficult situations than most other kickers.

Let's see the list then. Like I said, remove the wacky games here and there and the more difficult kicks (you seem to think difficulty == distance, which simply isn't true although longer kicks are certainly more difficult than shorter kicks all else equal), and there's no way 52 kickers are better than him since 2007. Zero chance.

Oh ok, well in that case it still can be said that being patient with Crosby (who at that point had several years of being clutch under his belt) is a different case entirely than being patient with a guy who has shown nothing yet.

And I guess now I am on board with at least letting Carlson finish out the preseason to see if he can get back on track. Or like I said if we suck this year, might as well ride him out and see.

But none of the anti-Crosby arguments are good. The guy is and was a solid kicker that you can rely on, and that's exactly what you want if you are trying to win games.

Actually all the numbers support the notion that Crosby was a below average kicker for most of his career.

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It has been my recollection over time that the kicks Crosby has missed over the years were generally:

1) Really tough;
2) Coming during one of his mini-slumps (which were often brought on by him missing a really tough kick); or
3) A random odd missed kick here or there.

In my mind, 1 and 2 are acceptable (2 only if the slumps never last long which in his case they don't).

Crosby struggled for long stretches over his career which in my opinion shouldn't be acceptable.

He had one bad season, and then a few random terrible games here and there. But you are right that the standard by which you judge him is your opinion.

You seem like one of those online stat eunuchs who googles numbers devoid of any context and then pretends to have correct opinions. Post the numbers and we can dig further. You might be right that Crosby was one of the worst long term kickers over the past 15 years, but I really doubt it because then he wouldn't have been gainfully employed by us for 15 years. You would have heard a lot more blame go his way if he lost us any big games because of his kicks. Through all the painful losses, you never really heard anyone scapegoat him (like they do with just about every other kicker), and that's because he showed up in big moments. The silence in that case is deafening.

[RingoCStarrQB]

Since this Carlson thread has gone off the rails............check this out:

HONORS
United Press International NFC Rookie of the Year (chosen from 1955-96): 1972
Associated Press All-Pro Team (chosen since 1940): 1972, '74
Pro Bowl Selection (played since 1950): 1972, '74

Chester Marcol wasn't just an instant standout in the NFL, he was a veritable prodigy. The first soccer-style kicker in Packers history, Marcol was capable of booming towering kickoffs and prodigious field goals unlike any straight-on kicker over the team's first 53 seasons. Among the early wave of soccer-style trailblazers at the league level, Marcol arguably made a bigger splash than any of them with the possible exception of future Pro Football Hall of Famer Jan Stenerud.

As a rookie, Marcol led the NFL in scoring with 128 points, was the league's consensus all-pro kicker and was named the NFC Rookie of the Year by United Press International.

In his pro debut, he kicked four field goals. Two weeks later, he booted three more, including the game-winner in the fourth quarter to upset defending Super Bowl champion Dallas, 16-13. When the Packers beat the Chicago Bears, 20-17, the next Sunday, Marcol kicked a 37-yard field goal into a 30-mile-per-hour wind with 30 seconds remaining. A little more than a month later, the Packers beat the Bears again, 23-17, with Marcol contributing a 51-yard field goal and also the game-clincher with 1:46 left to play. When the Packers swept back-to-back games against division rivals Detroit and Minnesota on frigid December days to clinch the NFC Central Division, Marcol kicked a combined seven field goals.

With one game remaining in the season, Bears coach Abe Gibron said he was of the belief that one player couldn't generally turn a team around, but he said the Packers of 1972 might be the exception. "I'll tell you the difference between winning and losing: Chester Marcol," said Gibron. "He beat us both games." Otherwise, Gibron insisted that his Dick Butkus-led defense had physically manhandled the Packers. Two weeks later, when the Packers played in their first postseason game in five years, opposing coach George Allen of Washington said he worried about Marcol as much as any player on Green Bay's roster. "He can kill you from 55 yards out," said Allen.

In the four years before Marcol's arrival in Green Bay, nine different straight-on kickers had made only 45.7 percent of their field goal attempts, were a horrendous 6-of-28 from 40 yards and beyond, hadn't kicked a single field goal of 50 yards and had missed six extra points. Marcol made 33-of-48 field goal tries, for 68.8 percent, with 10 conversions in 19 tries from 40 yards and beyond, including 2-of-3 from more than 50 yards out, and also was 29-of-29 on extra points.

Marcol's 33 field goals were the most ever by an NFL kicker in a single season at that point, although Jim Turner of the New York Jets had made 34 in 1968 in what was then the rival American Football League.

In truth, Marcol was a sensation of sorts before he even joined the Packers. In 1969 as a sophomore at Hillsdale College, he had kicked a 62-yard field goal, the longest ever in college football, not counting dropkicks. At the time, the NFL record for longest field goal was 56 yards by Bert Rechichar of the Baltimore Colts.

The Packers selected Marcol in the second round of the 1972 draft. At that point, only one other kicker, Charlie Gogolak, had ever gone higher. The Packers selected Marcol at the urging of scout Lisle Blackbourn, who as head coach of the Packers in the 1950s had conducted some of the best drafts in NFL history. "Liz Blackbourn was our area guy and he was telling us (Marcol) was kicking the ball off between the goal posts," Pat Peppler, the Packers' player personnel director at the time, said in a 2005 interview. While Peppler said the Packers had no reservations about Marcol's leg strength, it was Blackbourn who pressed them to take a kicker that high.

In Marcol's rookie year, he was one of nine soccer-style kickers in the post-merger, 26-team NFL. Only eight years earlier, Pete Gogolak had become the first when he began his career with Buffalo of the AFL. Like Marcol, a native of Opole, Poland, all of the other eight soccer-style kickers in 1972 were foreign born and were collectively having a far-reaching impact on the game. That year, they combined for nine of the league's 15 50-plus-yard field goals; whereas, in 1965, the last season in the NFL without a soccer-style kicker, the 14 straight-on kickers were 4 of 22 from 50-yard range.

At the end of the 1974 season, when Marcol led the NFL again in field goals made with 25 in 39 attempts and was again selected to the Associated Press All-Pro team and the Pro Bowl, he had scored 304 points in three seasons. The Packers' offense had scored 330. "I think he has got to be one of the top three (kickers) in the NFL," special teams coach Bob Lord said before the 1975 season. "And I'm not sure Chester has reached his full potential."

Then, in the first half of the season opener, Marcol tore a muscle in his upper thigh of his kicking leg and missed the remainder of the season. He returned in 1976 and made 34 of 59 field goal tries over the next three seasons but lost range on his kickoffs and never made another 50-yard field goal. By 1979, his life was spiraling out of control due to alcohol abuse, and his season was cut short, this time after 10 games, by a knee injury. He also had been a shell of himself, converting only 4-of-10 field goal attempts prior to being sidelined.

Marcol regained his job in 1980 and scored the game-winning touchdown in overtime of the season opener against the favored Bears when he fielded his own blocked field goal – wearing glasses and a single-bar helmet – and scooted around left end for 25 yards to climax a 12-6 victory. "That play certainly ranks up there with the greatest plays in Packer history," former team historian Lee Remmel said in 2005. "It was so bizarre, so providential."

Marcol later admitted that by then he also was abusing cocaine and had even snorted it in the bathroom of the locker room at halftime that day. On Oct. 8, 1980, a month after basking in the thrill of the most memorable moment of his career, Marcol was waived. In 102 games with the Packers, he scored 521 points and kicked 121 field goals in 195 attempts. His longest was 52 yards.

However, he played one last NFL game in Lambeau Field with the Houston Oilers. Left without a kicker due to an injury, the Oilers signed Marcol the day before the next-to-last game of the 1980 season. He kicked a 27-yard field goal in a 22-3 victory over the Packers but also missed 2-of-3 extra point tries.

Born Oct. 24, 1949. Given name Czeslaw Boleslaw Marcol.

–Cliff Christl

[Ghost_Lombardi]

Yeah, if we remove all of the bad seasons or stretches or wacky games - every attempt he ever missed since 2007 - then there's no way that many Kickers were better than him.

[APB]

6 pages on a kicker...

We're almost in midseason form.

It's a reflection of the passion we Packer fans have for our team, no matter the relevance of position or player...

[Drj820]

Drafting STs has not been gutes specialty. From the debacle with drafting the long snapper, to drafting tiny punter JK Scott. History gives us reason to be concerned about this inaccurate in college kicker.

[Crazylegs Starks]

Now that you mention it, Carlson's issues have effectively distracted us from the long snapper battle

[Pckfn23]

Now that you mention it, Carlson's issues have effectively distracted us from the long snapper battle

I haven't heard anything about the intern practice snapper all camp!

[texas]

Yeah, if we remove all of the bad seasons or stretches or wacky games - every attempt he ever missed since 2007 - then there's no way that many Kickers were better than him.

This sounds nice, but bastardizing my argument is dumb because I'm right and you guys are all wrong.

Yeah, you could obviously get way better statistics for any kicker by just ignoring all of their misses, but in Crosby's case, certain misses should be disregarded because he tended to miss a lot in short stretches before recovering completely, whereas with other kickers, they either 1) don't have a good FG percentage in general; or 2) when they start sucking they never really recover. And in both of those cases, they tend to randomly miss high pressure kicks at inopportune times, whereas Crosby never really did because his sucking was concentrated and anything but random.

So, there is no question that the types of misses Crosby would have, are far better to have than the kinds of misses other kickers would have. That's why, in his case, it makes sense to disregard the couple of wacky games (where he would miss like 4 or 5 times lol) and that one bad season he had that one time (really like a half a season iirc). It doesn't make as much sense to do this with other kickers.

[Pckfn23]

Yeah, you could obviously get way better statistics for any kicker by just ignoring all of their misses, but in Crosby's case, certain misses should be disregarded because he tended to miss a lot in short stretches before recovering completely, whereas with other kickers, they either 1) don't have a good FG percentage in general; or 2) when they start sucking they never really recover. And in both of those cases, they tend to randomly miss high pressure kicks at inopportune times, whereas Crosby never really did because his sucking was concentrated and anything but random.

This is just not really the case...

Crosby did not just miss a lot in short stretches. His first 4 seasons he missed a total of 30 FGs and was under 80%. Those are bad years. He had a good 2011, but then an atrocious 212. 2013 was really good, 2014 was not good, 2015 & 2016 were decent. Then an ok 2017, an ok 2018, and 2 great seasons in 2019 and 2020. 2021 again awful. 2022 decent. He had a lot of bad years where he just missed consistently throughout the year with some really really awful games. 2012 he missed in 9 of the 13 games he kicked in. 2014 it was 6 of the 14 games. 2018 was the result of 1 bad game. 2021 was 6 of the 16 games with a miss.

He wasn't any different than most kickers.

Most kickers who have been around a handful seasons or more have a better percentage than Crosby: https://stathead.com/tiny/Pnmw7

There are ALOT of kickers who suck, are cut, and then recover with a new team. The one thing different about Crosby is that he was not cut.

Crosby absolutely did miss high pressure kicks, it was only in the last 3-4 years were he was almost automatic at them.