SI's Peter King is taking a July vacation from his Monday Morning Quarterback column, so he's been having NFL players filling in for him the past few weeks. After previous submissions by Trent Green and Matt Birk, our own Chris Cooley got a turn. Cooley's submission was frankly underwhelming, but in his attempt at humor in which he tried to describe the futility of having conversations with a kicker, he did throw out something that caught my attention:
"A couple of weeks ago, I squatted over my helmet next to Shaun Suisham on the practice sideline of Redskins Park...Conversations with a kicker are typically nonsense-filled ideas ranging from Barack Obama staring down girls' backsides to Michael Jackson's death dragging his estate out of debt. Every so often, we even talk about football, but with a kicker it's usually something about how a holder's chubby, jittery hands can mess up an entire season or why adding two games to the regular season would be so much harder on a kicking leg... "
After going on awhile about installing sensors in footballs so that it could be precisely measured when the ball cross the goaline - or stay within the goalposts - he comes back to the fat punter:
"Yes, this great new method also applies to kickers and Suisham's short goal-post theory, though it can't make ex-punters any skinnier."
There's no way that the overweight ex-punter can be anyone but the notoriously rotund Ryan Plackemeier - Durant Brooks' replacement last year. That's Plackemeier in the photo. He is a large young man.
This, apparently, is Suisham's attempt to write off his 72% field goal success rate last year. For the sake of our kicking game, I hope Hunter Smith has lithe, nimble fingers that will be more to Suisham's liking.
Plackemeier held for a Freshman All American Sam Swank his senior year at Wake Forest. He then held for Josh Brown. Josh Brown during the next two years, (with Plackemeier at holder) had 4 game winning field goals, and one game tying field goal as time expired. After Josh was a franchise player, He became the highest paid Kicker in NFL history. Note Plackemeier held for him the last two years before the contract.
ReplyDeleteThe holder doesn't make the kicker. The kicker makes the holder. Shaun Suisham is a nobody, and got lucky when they axed Plack instead of him because Danny Smith and Shaun are in Bed together. Plack kicked through some terrible conditions and with exception to the Seahawks game, helped us in most games. Hopefully Dave Rayner gets the Job.