Green Bay Packers: Week 9 special teams recap
By Kenn Korb
The Kicker
Kickoffs:
- IND 1; 99 yard return TD
- Touchback
- IND -6; 61 yard return (GB 45)
- Touchback
- Touchback
- Touchback
Scoring:
- Extra points: 2/2
- Field goals: 2/3 (Made: 34, 27; Missed: 48)
Everything about this game was off for Green Bay — including their usually reliable kicker.
Crosby started off the game with the kickoff which was returned for the touchdown. Usually I say the returns can’t be blamed on him, but in this one he clearly erred — and that started the cavalcade of screw-ups which helped allow Jordan Todman to have such an easy return opportunity.
According to his special teams coordinator Ron Zook, the coverage call on this particular kick was meant to have Crosby place the ball more towards the right side of Green Bay’s field; Crosby’s kick went to the middle. With there being an overload of players set to the right, there were few players able to get over to the middle and close off Todman’s path. Other errors were made (I’ll get to those later) but it all started from the top.
After that, Crosby also saw another kick get returned 61 yards, but that one was less on him — he put it six yards into the endzone; sans a touchback, what more can he really do? — than the coverage.
His most egregious error may have been the missed field goal though. It was a long kick to be sure (48 yards is no chip shot), but this is the kind of kick most guys have come to be expected to make, and he has done well with them over the years — 61/83 on FG attempts between 40-49 yards in career (73.4%); 23/30 since his awful 2012 season ended (76.7%). He went out and missed this attempt though, further wasting what was a drive that had originally started at the IND 29 following Ha Ha Clinton-Dix’s first INT of the contest.
This was one of the worst showings we’ve seen from Crosby in a long time, on multiple levels. It isn’t time to panic, but with multiple misses in the past three games, keep an eye on him. Kicking has been somewhat off for tons of kickers this year; hopefully this is a blip on the radar rather than the beginning of another bad trend.