The NY Giants received more poor legal news regarding one of their players on Monday morning; this time, about kicker Aldrick Rosas.
It appears Aldrick Rosas’ time with the NY Giants has almost mirrored his personal life in the past few years; moments of greatness, and moments of failure.
By now, everyone knows Aldrick Rosas was arrested Monday morning in about the worst type of DUI – short of anyone dying or being seriously injured – you could possibly be in. He ran from the accident, adding further trouble to the situation and making it much more serious.
This is where I go back to my original point about the mirroring because this is not Aldrick Rosas’ first DUI according to The New York Post; that sort of changes things here.
In a way, it resembles his football career; gets off to a shaky start, does some amazing things (he made the All-Pro team in 2018), only to go right back down the ladder.
That makes this a very difficult and confusing situation for the NY Giants brass, as legal trouble has led their news waves all offseason and they’ve even had a kicker arrested for serious issues just a few years ago.
Rosas is subject to a mandatory suspension of two games for the DUI, so at the very least we know we’ll need a kicker for the first two games of the season. It’s unknown if the team will cut him due to this recent arrest and might not be known for quite some time, but I do think he has a decent chance of sticking with the team.
Besides that, the team would be nuts to only bring in one kicker for its offseason activities given the barren pool of talent currently makes up the kicker market.
Due to that market being so underwhelming, I got a little outside the box here on some of these and did some deep digging to see if we could dig up a potential gem.
Furthermore, I feel let down on a personal level (not that Rosas owes me a damn thing), as I campaigned for the team to retain him this offseason no matter what it took.
Here are five potential options to replace Aldrick Rosas at kicker, in order of my opinion of the best option to the worst option.
1. Ryan Succop
If Aldrick Rosas was in fact to be cut, Ryan Succop would be my clear cut first choice to take over for the embattled kicker. However, this is a complicated situation as the veteran sustained a knee injury early last year that limited him to just six games before being placed back on injured reserve in December.
Succop is an 11-year NFL veteran with a very solid 82.4% career kick conversion rate. He has hit a 50-yarder in every year of his 11-year NFL career with a career-long of 54 — the guy has a boomstick, as his 54% 50-yard plus conversion rate suggests.
He’s also been pretty solid on extra points with a career 97.1% rate.
Again, the only issue here is injury, but from the digging, I did the knee injury wasn’t a serious one like an ACL tear but more of a nagging one, which helps explain why he went 1-6 when he did play in those 6 games.
He’s also still just 33, so he could be more than just a short-term fix.
If he’s healthy by training camp, Ryan Succop should be a member of the NY Giants — with Aldrick Rosas’ future status not depending on it.
2. Stephen Gostkowski
As soon as news of Rosas’ arrest broke earlier today (nice way to wake up for a nap for me), my twitter feed was already getting pounded with NY Giants fans advocating for the team to sign the much-heralded veteran, Stephen Gostkowski.
However, there are several factors at play here that don’t make him the best option – or even really much of an option at all -in my opinion.
Before I get into them I want to point out his impressive career accolades that include three Super Bowl wins (which he played a big role in), four Pro Bowls, and three All-Pro teams. His career field goal percentage is an insane 87.4% which is one of the best in the history of the NFL.
Now, let’s get back to those factors at play. First off, most everyone knows the golden rule of dealing with the New England Patriots is that when Bill Belichick lets a guy go it’s usually for a reason and at the perfect time for him – he’s gotten all he could out of the player and doesn’t think his value meets his production anymore.
Interestingly enough, even though he’s got a brilliant track record on being right in those situations, the one that you could argue blew up the most for him was letting Adam Vinatieri walk in his prime.
Vinatieri has/had gone on to have 13 highly-productive seasons with the Colts and actually had a better career field goal % with the Colts than the Pats.
Yet, a smart observer would revert back to the ‘Belichick’ model of value not meeting production with a side of having a stud young kicker on the team that he believed could – and did – seamlessly take over the role.
The other factor here is that he is 36-years-old and on the decline. Although kicker is one of the most highly turned over positions in the NFL, the NY Giants need to be thinking to rebuild all across the board; that’s why I was so high on Rosas (his age/potential).
If this team was built for a playoff or Super Bowl run, my thoughts would be completely different, as that experience could pay off huge.
But, the NY Giants are not at that level and as such should attempt to look for a kicker for the future if Rosas is let go.
3. Jet Toner
Alright, folks, we’ve officially reached the part of this piece where I can guarantee most fans will have no idea who the heck these guys are, but on the flip side, you could have said the same thing about Aldrick Rosas before he went on to have that All-Pro season with the NY Giants in 2018.
First off, the name, Jet Toner? Awesome, sign him just for that (kidding). Good old Jet Toner spent his college years kicking footballs at Stanford at a pretty high level.
Unfortunately for him, he picked his last season to have his worst season and in turn went undrafted and is still unsigned (to the best of my knowledge, and I did a lot of digging, it’s harder than you think – not a lot of buzz about UDFA kickers signing days after the draft).
Toner’s senior year saw him kick just 12-16 field goals for a mediocre 75% with a long of 51, showing he does have some pop. If you’re in Toner’s corner, your argument would be that 16 opportunities aren’t too many and mistakes happen sometimes, and four aren’t too many of them.
When you start to look at his other two seasons though, that’s what makes him such an intriguing option for the NY Giants.
In 2018, Toner had almost a perfect season – literally – as he connected on 14-15 field goals (93%) and 34-34 extra points (we would welcome that type of XP productivity around here).
In his first season, he connected on 21-26 field goals (80.8%), while astonishingly nailing 54-54 extra points. While most count XP’s as times, there is no argument against that being an insane statistic.
In my opinion, he’s the best remaining unsigned college prospect kicker and as such should be signed immediately. He’s played under the bright lights, and again, there just aren’t many other options.
4. Jonathan Brown
Andddd this is the point of this article where things start to go off the rails a little bit, as I delved deep into both former college kickers and punters to uncover what could be this diamond in the rough for the NY Giants.
In fact, Jonathan Brown has such little in-game field goal kicking experience I had to dig up a picture of him on the kickoff unit he served for when he played for Louisville way back in 2014.
A former Kentucky soccer, Brown transferred to Louisville to play more soccer ended up on the football team as the kickoff man due to concerns over the other guy’s power. By all accounts, he did a fantastic job showing off his power by averaging close to 70 air yards per kickoff in his lone two college seasons.
He didn’t play or record any more stats after that season, so you must be thinking, what are we talking about here?
Well, someone got a good tip somewhere along the line and gave Jonathan Brown a call to work out for them two weeks after the draft that he never would have imagined he would have been participating in.
That team was the Cincinnati Bengals, and they saw enough out of Brown to keep him around for two full years on the practice squad. When he finally got his shot to show out in preseason in 2018, that he did. He connected on 6-6 field goals with a booming long of 55 yards.
It still wasn’t enough to win the competition, but it put him on the NFL radar and he’s bounced around several more teams without yet making an official field goal attempt in the NFL yet – he spent some time with the 49ers last year.
Sometimes, when things get rough and options are low, you’ve gotta think outta the box. I can’t think more out of the box than a “kicker” that’s never attempted a field goal in an official regular-season college or pro game and only spent one year of his college career kicking and it was on the kickoff team.
But, what’s the risk? The NY Giants could land Brown for next to nothing.
Give it a shot, fortune favors the brave and there’s no risk involved.
5. Joseph Charlton
If you thought the last prospect was crazy, just wait till you hear about this one (and please, don’t report me to the authorities for being crazy, I just like to think outside the box).
The thing that makes Joseph Charlton an even crazier proposition than Jonathan Brown is that he was a punter in college and made no field goal attempts in college.
Yet, he is considered the best punter in the history of the University of South Carolina and set a school record with a 47.7 punt average last year — at least showing he’s got pop in his leg, although in a different art form.
Okay, here’s the part where I start making good points.
Like most college punters, Charlton was a kicker in high school – and a damn good one. In fact, he was ranked as the 14th best kicker in that nation coming out that year, but South Carolina saw his potential as a punter – as most did – as he was ranked the #2 punter in the country that year.
So, even though it was four years ago, I highly doubt Charlton forgot how to kick. He would hardly be the first guy to make the transition from punter to kicker in the NFL (although it’s usually the other way around), and he was thought of highly enough to be invited to the NFL combine.
So again, why not let him take up one of the 90 camp bodies and see what he can do? What’s the risk?