The Jets are taking a stab at finding the next Jake Bates. They’ve signed Harrison Mevis to potentially handle their kicking.
Mevis was a notable kicker at Missouri, hitting 89 of 106 field goals in four years, including an SEC-record 61-yarder. And he converted all but one of his 149 extra points at the college level.
After going undrafted a year ago, he was unable to beat out Eddy Pineiro in Carolina. In the preseason, Mevis made his only kick, a 41-yarder.
With Birmingham in the just-completed UFL season, Mevis made 20 of 21 field goals, including a 54-yarder.
He’s got a cool nickname: “The Thiccer Kicker” – coming from him being a chunkier player. He’s listed at 5-foot-11 and 243 pounds. (Why the nickname isn’t instead the “Thicker Kickers” or “Thicka Kicker”, I’m not sure.)
In a corresponding move, the Jets released Anders Carlson, who’s done some NFL kicking the last two years. They have one other rookie kicker on their roster right now: Caden Davis.
The Lions were able to successfully pull off a transfer to a UFL kicker last year, with Jake Bates holding up just fine. Should Mevis and Davis sputter, there are plenty of veteran kickers looking for work, including Eddy Pineiro, Matt Prater, Nick Folk, Austin Seibert and Justin Tucker (who would come with the possibility of a suspension).
Regardless, expectations for the Jets and field goals should be low. They’ve got a lesser team (we can assume that, right?) and such teams don’t tend to score many points.
Since the NFL moved to 17 games back in 2021, 28 teams have finished with 5-7 wins (somewhere between 5-12 and 7-10). That seems like a fair estimate for the Jets. Of those teams, only six ranked in the top 10 in kicking points. Sixteen of those 28 teams ranked outside the top 20 in kicking points.
| KICKING POINTS FOR TEAMS WITH 5-7 WINS | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Team | Record | Points | Rank |
| 2021 | Atlanta | 7-10 | 111 | 19t |
| 2021 | Denver | 7-10 | 111 | 19t |
| 2021 | Washington | 7-10 | 109 | 21 |
| 2021 | Chicago | 6-11 | 105 | 23t |
| 2021 | Carolina | 5-12 | 104 | 25 |
| 2021 | Seattle | 7-10 | 95 | 28 |
| 2022 | • Las Vegas | 6-11 | 137 | 3t |
| 2022 | • Atlanta | 7-10 | 129 | 7t |
| 2022 | • Carolina | 7-10 | 129 | 7t |
| 2022 | NY Jets | 7-10 | 118 | 19t |
| 2022 | LA Rams | 5-12 | 115 | 22 |
| 2022 | Denver | 5-12 | 109 | 26 |
| 2022 | Cleveland | 7-10 | 107 | 28 |
| 2022 | New Orleans | 7-10 | 102 | 29t |
| 2022 | Tennessee | 7-10 | 92 | 32 |
| 2023 | • Chicago | 7-10 | 136 | 5 |
| 2023 | LA Chargers | 5-12 | 128 | 12 |
| 2023 | NY Jets | 7-10 | 124 | 15 |
| 2023 | Atlanta | 7-10 | 123 | 16t |
| 2023 | Tennessee | 6-11 | 115 | 22t |
| 2023 | Minnesota | 7-10 | 108 | 26 |
| 2023 | NY Giants | 6-11 | 90 | 30 |
| 2024 | • Dallas | 7-10 | 150 | 2t |
| 2024 | • San Francisco | 6-11 | 137 | 12t |
| 2024 | New Orleans | 5-12 | 112 | 24 |
| 2024 | Carolina | 5-12 | 99 | 28 |
| 2024 | Chicago | 5-12 | 88 | 30t |
| 2024 | NY Jets | 5-12 | 88 | 30t |
—Ian Allan