Can an Average Guy Beat an NFL Kicker in a Field Goal Competition?

Hi, Justin.

So I'm going up against Chandler Catanzaro in a field

goal off.

Do I have a chance.

Dang wind really picked up

I Drive, it.

Felt like bad contact.

It was bad contact.

No chance, none, none whatsoever.

All right, let's get it.

Of all the positions in all the sports who gets the very

most hate NFL kickers. Why?

Because what they do looks pretty damn easy.

All they gotta do is kick this ball through an upright

that's their only job. Why is it so hard?

I, myself grew up heckling,

NFL kickers all the time from the sideline in games.

You see, even their own teammates get mad at them,

but if it were so easy,

why would the highest level kickers in the world miss

So often last season of kickers who played all 16 games,

only three hit a hundred percent of their extra points and

only five hit over 90% of field goal attempts.

So I'm here in the home of my beloved New York jets.

The team I grew up rooting for the team who's kickers.

I grew up heckling and we're going to see how hard is it

really to kick a field goal. I'm going to give it a shot.

For this challenge.

I'll be kicking from three different distances.

First 33 yards, the length of an NFL extra point.

Then I'd kick from 40 yards and 50 yards.

And just to add a little pressure,

I'm going to be going up against professional kicker

Chandler Catanzaro

He's kicked for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers,

the New York jets and the Carolina Panthers.

But to start this challenge,

I figured I'd need someone who could help me get a leg up on

the competition.

So I reached out to the Baltimore Ravens kicker,

Justin Tucker,

who just happens to be the most accurate place kicker in NFL

history. Average Joe's is like me,

who likes to critique pros like you on the couch? We say,

Oh man, I can do that.

Like how hard is it to shoot a free throw under pressure?

How hard is it to kick a field goal? People who say that,

what do they misunderstand about how difficult your job is?

Anybody who is great at what they do.

They make it look effortless.

I can tell you that kicking a 33 yard, PAT

a 20 yard field goal, a 50 yard field goal.

It's never easy.

There are countless hours of preparation for me kicking a

football it's the 1.3 seconds that truly matter,

being a professional is making it look easy.

It does make the bad ones stand out. Just that much more.

Most kickers tend to remember their misses more than they do

their makes.

I do have two kicks for me that stand out to me that might

not stand out to anybody else.

And they were back to back attempts in Pittsburgh.

My rookie year,

we attempted a field goal from 41 yards left hash toward the

open-end and I pushed it just wide right

I think that was in the first quarter of the game.

And then in the third quarter,

we had another opportunity from 39 yards left hash going

towards the open-end. So pretty similar spot on the field.

We just knocked that ball right down the middle.

How often do you miss a field goal that you think is going

in and how often do you make a field that you think you've

missed? Do you always know based on the feeling,

As soon as the ball leaves my foot,

I have a very good idea of whether or not the kick is going

to be good due to the nature ground

where we happen to play in

or in the Mid-Atlantic. And you know,

we play on grass surfaces outside.

I've said this for several years now,

but I think our stadium is the toughest place to make kicks

in the NFL, there's always a chance that it could rain.

Our stadium is super windy.

The little flags on the top of the goalpost will switch from

the time I jog out onto the field to the time I'm kicking

the ball.

That was a second and third and fourth for that matter would

be all of our division opponents.

Cleveland is tough to kick at Cincinnati is tough to kick at

and Pittsburgh, of course.

And I'm not saying that just to make it seem like, Oh man,

the AFC North has such a hard place to kick and look at us.

We've made all these kicks here.

It's definitely hard to kick an AFC North.

And again always goes back to just taking each kick for what

it's worth and just making the most of those 1.3 seconds.

It sounds strange. It'd be like, I get more nervous.

Like I'm getting nervous,

like thinking about it now being up five in the super bowl

with Colin Kaepernick and the 49ers first and goal at the

plus five yard line,

I'm thinking this game is coming down to me,

I'll do everything I can to just, again,

focus on the action and not the consequences.

Think of just kicking the ball and making the kick and

everything else is unimportant in that span of 1.3 seconds.

You know, you watch football your whole life and you get an

opportunity to play in a Superbowl and potentially win.

Get a super bowl ring, all of that amazing stuff, right?

At the end of the day, you're still you're playing football.

And the only thing you can do is make kicks for what they're

worth in, in that moment in time,

we knocked down a 19 or 20 yarder and then a 38 yarder

to put us up by five with just several minutes left in

the game at that moment in time,

I'm just like pacing the sidelines.

And I'm kind of freaking out a little bit,

but if the game did happen to come down to me making a kick,

then I would do everything I could to just attack that

moment for what it was.

So something that I try to remember as best as I can is that

my feelings and during those 1.3 seconds,

between when Morgan throws a snapback,

when Sam spots it and when I kick it, those 1.3 seconds,

my feelings don't matter. What's in my head.

Doesn't really matter.

All that matters is putting my foot on the ball exactly

where it needs to be swinging fully and down the field

through to my target line.

That's the only thing that I truly can control is making my

body time up and just do what it's supposed to do.

In that moment I realized I had no idea about where I

should be putting my foot on the ball or how to swing

through the ball or how to finish downfield at my target,

or frankly,

how to do any of the mechanics of kicking a field goal.

I decided that might need some help in this kickoff against

Chandler.

We went out to get the best kicking coaches we could find at

one-on-one kicking, headed up by owner and founder,

Mike McCabe, who some call the godfather of kicking.

This is going to be interesting.

It is

After meeting with coach McCabe,

I linked up with one of his Northeast coaches, Luke Gaddis,

who had one to get me from zero kicking experience,

to kicking in the NFL field goal.

All right, we're here out in long Island

with coach Luke Gaddis of one-on-one kicking.

And he's going to give me some tips on how to hopefully hit

a field goal.

So let's address the first thing I have different color of

cleats on. I was wearing both yellow

cleats over there with my soccer cleats from my days as a

keeper. But you told me to switch to this cleat, why?

Yes I had to go size down.

So like I said, in your yellow, cleat on your right foot.

You had about this much room to spare.

So that's a lot of drag when you're coming down on your

foot. So a lot of connection to turf that you don't need.

So we knock it down a little bit,

nice form fitting cleat to your foot

and you should be golden

All right. Well, enough talk,

I guess I should try to hit one of these things.

Lets go find out.

All right.

All right. So just to get in front of the YouTube shade,

that's going to get thrown at me.

This is obviously not what it looks like.

When an NFL kicker goes to kick a kick or not doing it with

a rush. We're not doing it a lie.

We're not doing the screaming fans. Why is that Coach Luke

Nice and simple? He's brand new.

You know, you can't throw someone in the fire like that.

He just needs to learn the basics for a start for now.

We're going to sticks ball done.

All right. First day [mumbles] of my life, here I go.

Dang. Nope.

The wind, the wind really picked up there.

Right? When I was a strong headwind came on,

right when I was kicking.

That's we've got a little work to do.

All right, clay, number one, this is the contact row.

I want to work on having good quality form,

good quality technique, and good use of your body.

We want to get a plan foot pretty much as tight as we can

here. So I got my arm in front of me right here.

This arms would be in sync with my leg. Left.

Arm comes back, right leg kicks back through.

You want to be at that 45 degree back swing.

Do you have too high of a back swing

Now your knees coming down on top of the football.

It's very common.

You see a lot of guys in their new they'll make contact with

their toe. We ideally want to lock that foot out.

Lock that ankle out,

making contact on the metatarsal bone right here.

Don't let that arm come downward.

Now we've got to fix your contact [laughs]

You can see how you coming down and toe down. You see that?

There we go better. All right, clay,

no step ball contact drill.

We're trying to work on here's your form.

We're trying to generate a better lean that seam,

that center seam

My toe goes right to that center seam left on the front.

Back through, back through, Back through

some of the habits for new guys like you is to

come on top of the football like this.

Obvious

And I want to avoid that.

You want to generate room to allow you

to use your leg and hip

Okay?

That's not bad.

[screams]

That's better

Alright

That's a lot better.[laughs]

Okay. We're getting somewhere.

So we're going to do everything. We just did.

We're going to put it together in a one step,

but now adding a quality finish and quality ball,

we're going to have a right foot in front of us.

We're going to have a foot slightly open to the outside

panel of the ball.

You're going to have about 70% of your weight on your front

foot, 30% on your back foot.

You want that foot being set up so you could a push off the

pads of your feet and come in with a nice finish.

A nice through ball finish. You're gonna have a nice,

healthy lean bend to the waist a little bit.

Don't be stiff with this arm. Just let it be relaxed.

That's not bad.

A lot of guys think it's all on the leg. It's a smooth,

relaxed, compact approach.

It's not this exaggerated, this, this long step,

trying to kill it, kind of approach.

We're going to hit every ball at 80%. All right,

We're going to back this up to the 30 now

for the full step.

So what changes when you go to the full step.

Cause so now you're obviously taking more steps.

Yeah. You got a three, two approach.

We're going to really focus on and keeping ourselves in a

healthy, athletic stance, 70 30,

leaving our chest and shoulders alone.

As we make our approach not bouncing on our toes,

we're not going to try and kill it.

And we want the back swing. Nice and easy.

We're going to be at about 80% speed. Good,

healthy finish through the target, seeing the bowl,

stopping at parallel and then ripping it through

Just those things.

Just those little things.

It's those one, two, three, or 10 things.

That's what I'm looking for. That was smooth.

Again, we didn't try to kill it, but you see a difference.

You're just allow yourself to come through.

So when I came in here today,

I'd never kicked a field goal in my life.

After the session with coach Luke,

I feel a little bit better.

I'm having most trouble unlearning my soccer habits,

where I would point my tail and getting it more of a side

angle, which is how fool kickers do it.

And also just following through, I always pull up,

I had that same problem in the soccer challenge,

above average Joe challenge.

I just need to follow through all the way,

but I did hit a few from about 30 yards.

So I feel good about that. Just pray.

I get a strong tailwind on that 50 yard shot.

Otherwise I don't think it's coming close, but yeah,

we'll see her in a couple of days.

[upbeat music]

All right. We are here at the home of the New York jets,

the final showdown. I'm going to take some field goals.

See if I can work my way into this New York jets ring of

honor, which there are no kickers.

So why shouldn't I be the first?

What are your predictions for today?

I think I'm gonna hit zero and completely choke.

I got always there. No, I think it's a little chilly.

So I'm a little worried about being warm

but I think if I do warm up,

I think I'll hit two or three of the 30 yarders and then

that's it.

It's actually really surprising being on the field and

looking at the field goalposts and seeing just how narrow

they are. It's it's not that inspiring confidence myself

[upbeat music]

My opponent for this final showdown

is NFL kicker Chandler Catanzaro.

Unfortunately he can't be here.

He's in South Carolina doing his kicks,

but he has played for the New York jets.

So I'll be on his home field doing my kicks and we have a

good old fashioned, a zoom kickoff.

Hey Chandler, what's up?

Thank you so much for doing this. We,

we really appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for having me Clay

we're at the Citadel practice fields.

It's a great place to train.

It's got, you know, NFL uprights college uprights.

We got a beautiful day in Charleston.

Yesterday was my first time kicking a field goal ever.

And I did. Okay.

I feel fairly confident that I can hit one 33 yards.

So that's, that's where I'm at today.

Oh, I don't know, man. I mean,

MetLife in general for professional kicker is not the

easiest place to kick anyway. So you're starting,

you're starting, you know, in a tough spot there.

It's going to get super windy in there it swirl a good bit.

So I'd say you definitely have an advantage heading in

today, but what I'm hoping for is

I have a perfect day and I go

three for three from 33 and yeah,

I kinda hoping you go wide, right?

wide left or miss it somehow.

I think that's a fair go for you is to start, you know,

making three for three from 33.

And once you push it back to 40 and 50,

that's a little deep.

We'll see what we'll see how much juice your legs got there.

All right. Well thanks.

Yeah. For the 30 and 40 yards, I'll definitely stick 80%.

But for 50, I can't promise that I will,

I will probably swing as hard as I can and potentially blow

out a hammy here, but hopefully not. Alright man.

Let's let's do this thing. Let's kick.

Let's do it, man.

Looking forward to it.

All right. Clay Skipper,

undrafted free agent six foot one number double zero.

This is my NFL edition tryout tape.

Nope.

Its so good. But it's just the sky shot

also. It's raining a lot harder now.

All right, clay,

that's three for three from the 33 from the extra point

distance, we're gonna move it back to the 30 yard line.

See what you got up in 40

Consistency is not my strong suit,

but I've showed that I have the leg to make an NFL team

PAT specialists. So let's go try from 40 .

[Man] Chandler went three for three on this

Damn. Of course he did.

[upbeat music]

All right. 30 Yards did not go as well as I'd hoped.

So we've moved back to 40 yards.

I imagine that will go spectacularly. The,

I think the goal here is to get it into the red zone,

which is 20 yards an end. And if I do that, I'll be stoked.

I hit the end zone. I'll be super stoked

Man. It's just like instinct to kick as hard as you can.

[Man] Try 80%

Okay.

I'm going to try like 50%,

no matter how many times they tell me not to hit a hundred

percent, I just always hit a hundred percent.

So that time I hit it way too hard. So on this one,

cause I don't think I'm in danger of making it.

I'm just going to try to hit like 60% and see what happens.

See if I can even do that.

And it went much further [laughs]

All right.

So it's almost like coaches.

Know what they're talking about. That was,

I really tried to swing that super,

super light and it went way further than the other ones.

So thank you Lily.

[Man] Dude that was your best of the day

I know I barely hit it.

Nope. Alright. I missed all three.

So we're going to move back to 50 and see what I can do.

From there

[Woman] Oh yeah

Good for you Chandler.

All right. So now we're back at 50.

I think even average Joe's on the couch who hate on kickers,

understand that a 50 yard field goal is very hard.

So when I'm hitting the thirties,

it's kinda difficult to get an appreciation for how good an

NFL kicker is.

But I think kicking from here and seeing how short I'm

probably going to come up,

it's really going to give us a good perspective on how crazy

is it hitting 50 Yards with consistency.

Nailed it. Nathan. Fivish yard line

It's close-ish.

All right. Last kick 50 yards.

Last kick total.

I gotta make this one redeem myself.

Oh, I still miss that.

Three for three boss.

So Chandler,

obviously I didn't hit any from 50 or from 40 or from 33.

So I went a whopping off of nine there,

but I think it just goes to show, you know,

if guys are sitting on their couch at home,

which I've definitely done and been like,

I can get out there and kick it's pretty damn hard,

but actually not from 30, 30 is pretty easy.

I'm just bad at it, but I definitely have

a lot more respect for you.

I get that a 40 yard field goal is very difficult and a 50

yard field goal is basically impossible.

So next time I'm watching you. I will,

I will heckle a little bit less

Appreciate that clay.

You know, it's, it's fun kicking with you, man.

No, you're right.

it is tough to just get off your couch and go start kicking.

You know,

you have to have the kind of the natural leg speed,

speed to get the ball off the ground.

And you're that kid from years and years of soccer and you

know, kind of transition to football and,

and here I am today,

but got a lot of respect for you for putting yourself out

there and giving it a shot.

It's definitely not as easy as it looks and we try to make

it look as easy as possible.

Yeah. Yeah.

I wish he hadn't said the part about years and years of

soccer, which got you there, but even still, yes, it was,

it was extremely difficult.

And I appreciate you being a good sport about it,

except for hitting all nine.

Cause you made me look very bad,

but the viewers will enjoy that. So thank you.

I'm going to keep working.

I'm going to go see if I can hit a 10 yarder right now and

start there and work backwards.

Yeah. What I would say is

use a two-inch kickoff tee you know,

get a little bit off the ground. It's really,

really tough to generate enough leg speed,

to get the ball off the ground,

whether you're kicking a 20 yard or trying a 50 yard or

like, like you did, there's so many moving parts to kicking.

If you miss a sweet spot by like this much, it can be the,

the, you know, make or miss.

[mumbles]

I still miss that.

Now that we've wrapped. It's important.

As we did in the beginning to address a couple of important

caveats to this challenge,

obviously there was no body rushing me.

It's easier to kick from sticks. I mean,

I shouldn't say easier. It's different to kick from sticks.

I would imagine easier than from a snap. There was no crowd,

no pressure, but this was really a distance challenge.

This was just to see if I had the technique and strength to

hit it from 30, 40, and 50 yards.

So you have to start somewhere. We started with that.

And as we proved in this episode,

I got to work on technique and strength before we can even

add in any of those other complications.

The most important thing I learned was that you shouldn't

kick as hard as you can. You just see how far away you are.

And you're like, I'm really gonna put my leg into this.

But just like they tell you in golf,

slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

You just got to focus on technique. Even at 40 yards.

I think I had my best kicks. Obviously they didn't go in,

but it was cause I was just was relaxed and just focusing on

hitting it rather than putting my full leg behind it.

So biggest lesson, if they told me to go 80% really go 80%.

Well, once again, shout to NFL kickers.

[laughs]

I know that we fans get on you a lot,

but this just proves how damn hard it is.

It is very difficult and my full praise and kudos goes out

to you. You guys are really good at what you do.

And I know I started this episode ragging on the jets a

little bit,

but thank I thank them for letting us use their stadium.

And yeah,

I have new appreciation for how difficult football is next

episode.

It's going to be punting.

Finally, maybe.

The best way to sign off with a mate. See you next time.

All right. So for the purposes of this video,

I completely failed. I went over nine from three mystery,

from 33 mystery, from 40 mystery from 50,

but the original intent of this video,

see if I can hit one from 30 and I feel like doing all those

kicks. I did learn a lot about not trying so hard.

So for my own personal glory,

I'm going to try to hit three from the 20 yard line,

which would be a third yard field goal.

And see if I did actually improve and get better.

Get in.

Let's go. There we go.

Finally, thank you for your patience and bearing with me.

It's a journey. It's always a journey,

but I'm glad I made one.