NY Giants: Top 5 kicker options to briefly replace Graham Gano

5. Chandler Catanzaro (free agent)

Dave Gettleman’s first choice this offseason to replace Rosas, was Chandler Catanzaro, had a solid shot of becoming the 2020 Big Blue kicker if not for Graham Gano getting medically cleared.

At the time, NY Giants fans were not psyched about the prospect of bringing Catanzaro aboard, mainly due to the fact that he couldn’t secure the NY Jet’s starting job in 2019 despite it being one of the worst kicking situations in the entire NFL.

However, when you delve into the former Clemson kicker’s resume, he really gets an unfair rap.

For the most part, since his college days, he’s been the epitome of a solid kicker with an 83% lifetime NFL field goal percentage and a 93% extra point conversion rate — he also only missed a single kick in both of his junior and senior years at Clemson.

At his peak, Catanzaro has shown the ability to be an upper-echelon kicker in the National Football League; look no further than his 2015 season with the Arizona Cardinals that saw him knock in 28/31 field goals (90.3%), with his Achilles’ heel being kicks over 50 yards in which he was 0-2.

Yet, in the next three seasons, he nipped that in the bud by launching long bombs of 60, 57, and 59, so concerns over his power should be quieted by now. Even with that first season going 0-2 on 50+ yard field goals, Catanzaro is still a respectable 10-16 (62.5%) overall in his career.

Catanzaro oddly chose to retire after one shaky preseason outing with the NY Jets in 2019, but appears to have his head back on straight and was in the NY Giants’ building this offseason so he seems like a very logical stop-gap kicker that shouldn’t lose the team a game if Big Blue decides to bring him in.

But the clock is ticking, and rolling the dice with Ryan Santoso is a risky move that could conceivably be the difference in this upcoming game where the Giants are now -5.5 favorites after the Joe Burrow injury.