It Should Be Against The Law To Lose Your Kicker During A Football Game
When will Roger Goodell step in and do something to fix this plague of kicker injuries that are ruining this game I love? Okay, a team loses their kicker once in a blue moon. But when it does happen, it completely fucks that team and turns EVERYTHING on tilt for the rest of the game. Some of it is cool, such as your team going for it on fourth down all the time like the Lions do under Dan Campbell. Some of it sucks, like when your team doesn't get the first down because they don't have nearly the same amount of talent or practice going for it as the Lions under Dan Campbell.
Today was one of those weird games for the Giants after Graham Gano got hurt chasing down a returner during the opening kickoff on a play that was called back for holding, which resulted in punter Jamie Gillian missing an extra point so badly the Giants didn't attempt a field goal or extra point the rest of the day.
Usually I would just chalk that up to shit luck. However, it's hard to do that considering Gano was placed on the injury list on Friday with a groin injury and had this type of update during pregame workouts.
I like Joe Schoen because he is handsome and everyone told me how good of a hire he was when the Giants put him in charge of cleaning up the mess The GM Who Shall Not Be Named left behind. But I hated him going into today's game with an injured kicker based on how bad Gano was playing injured last year and I REALLY hated it when Gano got hurt on literally the first play of said game.
While the Giants were forced to go for two when they scored touchdowns and go for it even for gimme field goals, the Commanders got to flaunt their healthy kicker around to kick a half dozen field goals before hammering the game-winning seventh field goal (If Dan Quinn knew the first thing about sportsmanship, he would've made his punter kick all the field goals and extra points for the rest of the game once Gano went down).
Which is why Goodell should step in and save NFL GMs from themselves. There should be an Emergency Kicker at every NFL game to prevent what happened to the Giants today from ever happening again. I love weird football, but a team without a kicker feels like a step too far. That Emergency Kicker should also be able to punt since Punter Injury Games are even more chaotic than Kicker Injury Games. The third and final rule is that the Emergency Kicker can never have kicked or punted in college because there should still be some chaos if your kicker gets hurt, but not utter helplessness.
Basically the best case scenario is that the Dare Ogunbowale situation with the Texans plays out again out of nowhere.
If Goodell can't get this plan done, I vote the next President of the United States should make it their first order of business after they get elected because no American should have to suffer through what Giants fans suffered through today.
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P.S. Truth be told, I love when a team has to scramble on the fly without their kicker or punter because it does lead to some weird football. However it absolutely sucks when it involves my team, my fantasy team, or my bets. So I would like this Emergency Kicker rule to be instated only for games where it hurts me or my wallet.
Until the legal red tape clears however, I kindly ask Joe Schoen TO SIGN A HEALTHY KICKER AND NEVER USE A FUCKING INJURED KICKER AGAIN BECAUSE IT CAN LITERALLY COST YOU A DIVISION GAME IN A SEASON THAT IS SOMEHOW ALREADY ON THE BRINK TWO WEEKS IN. Or just get a punter that can kick and a kicker that can punt, this way you are covered in case one goes down (If they both somehow go down due to some awful luck, you just tell the Football Gods to fuck themselves then prepare for next week).