Patriots NFL Draft: New England should draft place kicker Tyler Bass

For the first time in 24 years, the New England Patriots were forced to use more than one place kicker in 2019. The Patriots should consider drafting a kicker in this year’s NFL Draft.

The one position the New England Patriots have never had to worry about has been their placekicker. Up until last season, there have only been two kickers during the Bill Belichick coaching era: Adam Vinatieri, who was brought in to New England as an undrafted rookie free agent in 1996, four years before Belichick took over the reins in New England, and Stephen Gostkowski, who took over for Vinatieri in 2006 and has since handled the kicking duties for the last 13 years.

After being one of the top kickers in the NFL during his 14-year career with the New England Patriots, Gostkowski, unfortunately, was put on season-ending injured reserve in 2019 due to a left hip injury, which is the “plant foot” leg for right-footed kickers. The Patriots then signed and released Mike Nugent, Nick Folk, and Kai Forbath to replace Gostkowski. The Pats eventually re-signed Folk to finish out the season as their kicker.

We know that Gostkowski had an injury to his left hip, but what we don’t know is how long the injury was there. But when reminiscing over the last few years, you can’t deny that the Patriots have lost games due to the inability of Gostkowski mainly missing on extra points, and it’s worth mentioning that he has also missed on a handful of field goals during this span as well. With that being said, it is extremely challenging to judge a kicker.

When you put into consideration everything that goes into successfully making a field goal, it is easily one of the biggest variables in a football game. Everything almost needs to go perfect every time and that’s something you can’t really prepare for. But from the start of the 2012 season, and all the way to the last four games Gostkowski played in 2019, he successfully kicked 94 percent (73/78) of his field-goal attempts within 30-39 yards, which is where a majority of his kicks came from in this eight-year span.

The missed field goals didn’t come off as surprising as did the extra points. From 2007-2015, Gostkowski went 100 percent on his extra-point attempts. The beginning of Gostokowski’s decline started in 2016 when he started to miss extra points. From the final four years of his New England Patriots career, 2016-2019, Gostkowski missed 10 of his extra-point attempts during that span. He missed four extra points in 2019 before Bill Belichick decided to make a change.

Seeing as the Patriots didn’t have the best of luck in bringing in veteran free agents to kick for them last season, it would make sense for the Pats to draft their next franchise kicker. I’m not sure where kicker values in comparison to other positions, but the team currently does not have a placekicker on their roster and should draft one in this year’s draft.

A kicker that will be available to the Patriots is Tyler Bass out of Georgia Southern. Bass is a consistent and reliable kicker who achieved All-Sun Belt First Team honors once (2018) and twice achieved All-SBC Second Team honors (2017, 2019) during his college career. Bass finished his career impressively making 114/116 on his extra points and was 54/68 on his field-goal attempts. It’s worth mentioning that Bass successfully kicked 93 percent of his field-goal attempts within 30-50 yards. Bass is young and has a big leg! He would not be a disappointing draft pick.

Drafting a kicker all depends on where a team values the position on their football team. The last time the New England Patriots drafted a kicker was in the fourth-round of the 2006 draft to select Gostkowski. Bill Belichick finds value in kickers and punters. Don’t be surprised if the New England Patriots draft a kicker in the fourth round this year.