The Offseason

[Patler]

He is average at best, and what good is it to send a kicker out for a 50+ field goal if the chances of making them are less than half? The bottom line is that Crosby hasn't had any competition in camp, so we simply don't know if there is a better kicker out there for the Packers. 78% was his average this year, which ranked him 30th in the NFL.

David Akers has been named to the Pro-Bowl five times and a first team All-Pro four time. Let's compare:

Overall:
Akers - 294/359 81.9%
Crosby - 107/137 78.1%

0-19 yards
Akers - 5/5 100%
Crosby - 4/4 100%

20-29 yards
Akers - 95/96 99%
Crosby - 36/37 97.3%

30-39 yards
Akers - 96/109 88.1%
Crosby - 31/38 81.6%

40-49 yards
Akers - 83/117 70.9%
Crosby - 26/37 70.3%

50+
Akers - 15/32 46.9%
Crosby - 10/21 47.6%

Two things jump out at me, looking at those stats:

- The difference at 30-39 yards. That seems to be Crosby's only weakness. However, his sample size is somewhat small, thus magnifying the significance of each miss. If he "fixes" that he compares favorably to a perennial Pro-Bowl/All Pro kicker.

- 21 of Crosby's 137 attempts have been from 50 or more. That's 15% of his attempts. 32 of Akers' 359 attempts have been from 50 yards or more. That's 9%. For Crosby, 1 of every 7 is from 50+. For Akers, 1 of 11. Since that is clearly where success drops significantly, kicking that frequently from that distance hurts Crosby's overall success rate a lot.


Really, we should expect this. For most of Crosby's career the Packers have been very successful scoring TDs when they get inside the red zone. As a result, Crosby has fewer chances for the most makeable FGs. Couple that with MM's willingness to try 50-55 yarders whenever possible, and you will have a fieldgoal kicker that has almost no chance to match the success rate of kickers on teams that struggle to score TDs in the red zone.