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WPC: Staying Medium


JimmiJo

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http://www.warpathconfidential.com/?p=672

Staying Medium

By John Pappas

Warpath Confidential Editor

Washington Redskins’ Kicker Shaun Suisham is a thoughtful young man. He is not one to be particularly vocal or overly demonstrative. He is consistent. Whether at practice in camp, or lining up for a game-winning field goal, his temperament is steady; neither high nor low.

Suisham has been this way since he came to the Redskins in 2006, even before Jim Zorn became head coach and began preaching his mantra of ’staying medium.’ So when the team brought in kicker Dave Rayner to compete for the place kicker’s job, no-one expected different from him.

“The last two years, everyone was asking me what it was like to not have competition,” he said. “They were saying, ‘you should have competition; why don’t you have competition.’ Now that there is somebody here you are asking me how I feel to have competition. I guess it’s all relevant. We will see how it plays out. But what it comes down to is I need to kick well.”

For Suisham, kicking well is more than just making field goals.

“I am trying to kick that ball with as much hang-time and as deep as I can, unless we call a pooch kick,” he said. “Obviously when you directional kick things change a little bit and that’s very important stuff too. Instead of always just pounding the ball down the middle you got to be able to place the ball and move it around and do what they ask.”

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After last night im not sure that Chad Johnson isnt a better kicker than Suisham.

Obviously kidding but I wish we had a better kicker.

He is still very good from short range, going 7-for-7 last year from 20-29 yards, and 7-for-9 from 30-39 yards. After that though it dropped off, 11-for-16 from 40-49 yards.

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He is still very good from short range, going 7-for-7 last year from 20-29 yards, and 7-for-9 from 30-39 yards. After that though it dropped off, 11-for-16 from 40-49 yards.

Hmmm that doesnt seem too bad. I just wish we had a kicker where you just KNOW hes going to make it.....whens the last time we had that? This team has about as much kicker troubles, as QB troubles in the last 15 years.

He needs to work on the power in the ol leg. His kickoffs werent very good from what I remember, and a few of his 50 yarders fell embarassingly short at times.

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Suisham was improving, but going just off the stat line from last season it looks like he regressed. Hard to tell if it was all the holding, or just Suisham. I could understand hold problems with Brooks since he was a rookie, but Plackeimeir had experience. Then again he could have done poorly, like I said hard to tell.

Hopefully the holding thing was the real issue and Suisham can start improving again. I like that we brought in Rayner to push him. Ought to be an interesting competition.

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From the stats guys at footballoutsiders.com:

Field-goal percentage is almost entirely random from season to season, while kickoff distance is one of the most consistent statistics in football.

This theory, which originally appeared in the New York Times in October 2006, is one of the our most controversial, but it is hard to argue against the evidence. Measuring every kicker from 1999 to 2006 who had at least ten field goal attempts in each of two consecutive years, the year-to-year correlation coefficient for field-goal percentage was an insignificant .05. Mike Vanderjagt didn't miss a single field goal in 2003, but his percentage was a below-average 74 percent the year before and 80 percent the year after. Adam Vinatieri, supposedly the best kicker in the game, has never has never had two straight seasons with accuracy better than last year's NFL average of 83 percent.

On the other hand, the year-to-year correlation coefficient for kickoff distance, over the same period as our measurement of field-goal percentage and with the same minimum of ten kicks per year, is .61. The same players consistently lead the league in kickoff distance, particularly Neil Rackers, Olindo Mare, Josh Brown, and for the last two years, Stephen Gostkowski.

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