Rick Gonsalves puts together the first-ever thorough look at kickers in the NFL. There's some good stuff in this book -- anecdotes and stats -- but too many flaws to make it onto a must-read list.
BOOK REVIEW
Placekicking in the NFL: A History And Analysis By Rick Gonsalves
For me, kickers are a guilty pleasure. Most tend to disregard them, especially in fantasy league – just pick whatever’s left in the last round. But I work from the premise that there’s some extra value there to capture, and that it usually makes sense to select one before the rush at the end of fantasy drafts. But how much earlier? And which kicker to select? I spend considerable time looking at the guys at this position, trying to string together forecasting models involving age, accuracy, supporting cast, field conditions and whatnot.
So I was as excited as anyone when I heard that Rick Gonsalves would be publishing a book solely about kickers. He’s a guy who’s been researching and studying kickers (and only kickers) for years. He works out of Massachusetts, where he founded a kicking academy, and I’ve seen him interviewed in documentaries put together by NFL Films. This book originally was going to come out in July, I think, but there were some kind of publishing delays. It kept getting pushed back, and I didn’t wind up getting it until November. I don’t have a ton of leisure time for reading during the regular season, so I didn’t finish making it through the 362 pages until last month.
Alas, it’s largely a disappointment. There are a few good facts and ideas in there, but so many errors that it’s distracting.
How is it that Gonsalves on the one hand be maybe the country’s leading authority on kickers, but on the other hand doesn’t even know how to spell their names? In introduction is only four pages long, for example, and in there you’ll find "Martin" Andersen, Mark "Moreley", "Roy" Wersching, “Ryan” Lindell, "Dan" Chandler and "Patty" Driscoll.
Some of those errors can be attributed to the process of Gonsalves writing things out by hand. He’s close to 70, and there’s a line in the acknowledgements where he thanks his typists for being able to make sense of his handwriting. But you would think he’d eventually read his own book (or that he would have hired a proofreader with some working knowledge of the NFL).
But it’s not all typos. Throughout the book, Stephen Gostkowski is Steve Gostkowski, David Akers is Dave Akers, Robbie Gould is Rob Gould and Billy Cundiff is Bill Cundiff. Not technically wrong, I guess, but it rubs the reader the wrong way. If you were reading a book on quarterbacks, it would jump out at you as weird if the author kept writing Phil Rivers, Rob Griffin III and Russ Wilson.
The writing quality is remarkably low. There are all kinds of issues with sentence construction and writing style. This guy Gonsalves, while he’s studied kickers, clearly isn’t a writer of any ability. It’s herky-jerky throughout – kind of like high school paper.
But let me set aside my bitching and complaining to give credit to some of the stuff Gonsalves gets right. There are a lot of historical anecdotes in this story that are interesting. He documents all of the big kickers and significant field goals of the entire history of the league. He recaps the career of Lou Groza, points out that Charlie Gogolak was the first kicker selected in the first round, stuff like that. He carefully lays out the switch from toe kickers to soccer-style kickers. He looks at field goals on grass versus turf and at indoor versus outdoor venues.
I was not aware of a pivotal field goal that occurred in a playoff game between the Packers and Colts in the ‘60s. The Colts were sure it was wide; Don Chandler’s body language seemed to suggest it was wide. But the refs didn’t know and gave him credit for it. That field goal played a role in the rule change requiring a referee to be placed under each upright on field goals. It also contributed to them making uprights taller.
This book also dusts off some stories I had forgotten about. In 2002, Pittsburgh was in overtime against the Browns. Cleveland blocked Todd Peterson’s game-winning field goal attempt. But the Steelers attempted the kick on second down, so when they recovered the ball behind their own line of scrimmage, they were allowed to kick again on third down. That’s a subtle rule that I had forgotten about.
I used a trivia question on the website last week about Jan Stenerud and ski jumping. That’s one I picked up out of this book.
My favorite stat in this book is one showing how kickers have fared against opposing kickers on their home field. This allows us to see just how good Robbie Gould and Phil Dawson really are. In the 1999-2012 seasons, Dawson hit almost 85 percent of his field goals at home. Opposing kickers in those same games hit under 78 percent. For Gould, he hit over 84 percent at Soldier Field thru 2012, versus under 77 percent for opposing kickers in those games. I thought that was pretty cool.
Ultimately, this book isn’t for everyone. You’ve got to be really interested in kickers. And even if you’re in that tiny subset, you’ll be rolling your eyes at a lot of what you see. Tons of errors, and really poor writing. But if you want to wade your way through, you will pick up some interesting info along the way.