Giants Sign Another Kicker – Rhys Lloyd To The Rescue

The Giants have brought in another leg, K Rhys Lloyd, for insurance incase Lawrence Tynes’ bruised quad remains an issue. This one is interesting because although he is among the best kickoff specialists in the NFL he has never attempted an extra point. Matt Dodge may be still on duty after all…

via Giants.com

"The team announced late today that it has signed Rhys Lloyd, a kicker with an unusual history. He has played in 50 NFL games and has kicked off 220 times – but has never attempted a regular season field goal or extra point.To make room on the roster, the Giants have waived/injured cornerback Woodny Turenne (calf)."

Apparently up until now, there has been as aspect of strategy to the kickoffs because Tynes could never consistently get the ball into the endzone. And like the Carolina game, even if he did the Giants coverage is so bad you’r better off taking it from 8 yards deep to well out past the 20 or 25. Well, those days might be over with the signing of Lloyd to the kicking unit — guy has quite a leg on him according to Eisen’s stats.

"Rhys is one of the NFL’s premier kickoff specialists. Sixty-four of his 220 kickoffs have been touchbacks, a rate of 29.1 percent. In 2008, he led the NFL with 30 touchbacks on 88 kickoffs (34.1 percent) for the Carolina Panthers. The following season, he had 21 touchbacks on 71 kickoffs (29.6 percent)."

Another big change with this move of course, aside from the increased touchback numbers for the Giants, is the endless amount of Dumb and Dumber quotes we can come up with using the kicker’s last name.

Let the games begin…