Dear Sports Fan

Kickers are the resident aliens of a football team — and when I say alien, I don’t mean an immigrant in the process of becoming a naturalized citizen, I mean a green, bug-eyed Martian living amongst us Earthlings. Kickers play a very important role on every football team but that doesn’t mean they fit in.

Football teams have a lot of players on them. NFL teams can carry 53 players for a game and college teams can have 85 players! Only 11 players can be on the field at one time, so the large rosters leave room to have a lot of specialists. Offensive players don’t play on defense. Defensive players only play on offense every once in a while. There are players who specialize in playing in certain situations, like when a team is on defense and knows it’s opponent is going to throw the ball. Then there are the most specialized of all players, the kickers. Kickers are a group apart. They don’t engage in any of the activities that are seen as truly core to football. They don’t hit or get hit, they don’t throw, they don’t catch, they don’t block. They don’t usually look like football players. They’re not bulked-up behemoths, they don’t wear scary looking shields on their face-masks. More frequently than other positions, they don’t share a common background with other football players. They didn’t grow up playing Pee Wee Football, being the best athlete in their schools. They grew up playing soccer or rugby and then switched over later in life. Sometimes they didn’t even grow up in the United States.

What kickers do is kick the football. You might say they put the “foot” in “football” but then you’d be ignoring all the incredible footwork that offensive linemen do in unison to block defenders, that quarterbacks to do slide away from threats in the pocket, that running backs do to juke people out of their shoes, and that cornerbacks do running backwards at full speed. You’d certainly be forgetting about the amazing balletic footwork of wide receivers to make a catch while falling out of bounds. There are two types of kickers on a football team. Here’s who they are and what they do.

What is a kicker in football?

I know what you’re probably thinking. How can we have a subset of an article called “What is a kicker in football?” called “What is a kicker in football?” I agree, it’s strange. but here’s the thing: one of the two kicking positions on a football team is called “kicker.” The kicker is the one who kicks field goals and extra points. A field goal is the one long-distance way to score points in football. At any point in the game, a team can decide to attempt a field goal. When this happens, the kicker runs on the field, accompanied by his key accomplices, the long-snapper and a holder. The long-snapper snaps the football seven yards back where the holder catches it, places it on the ground vertically, and then the kicker kicks it. If the kick goes through the goal-posts and above the upright (football goal posts are shaped like a U sitting on top of an I. A successful field goal has to fly within the U part of the goal.) If the field goal is good, the team gets three points. An extra point is just a specialized field goal that happens after a touchdown. It’s from very close to the goal-line and it’s worth one point. Good kickers almost never miss extra points. As for field goals, a good NFL kicker should always make a field goal from less than 40 yards. 40 to 50 yard field goals are difficult but are usually made. Over 50 yards is a real crap-shoot.

Three points is a significant number and many, many games are decided by a field goal. The difference between a good kicker and a great kicker may be how calmly he can perform under pressure. Close games often end with a long-distance field goal attempt. Kickers who make these are heroes… until the next time, at least.

What is a punter in football?

The punter doesn’t get the glory (or the blame) that a kicker gets but the position is at least as important. Football is said to be a game of field position. This means that if a team can control where it and its opponent starts each possession with the ball and manipulate it so that their opponent has to consistently travel farther than them to score a touchdown, they have a good shot at winning. The punter is the key player in this stratagem. When a team is going to give the ball up to the other team, instead of giving the ball to them wherever it starts the play, they can punt the ball down the field and give it to their opponent there. I recently wrote a whole post about how punts work in football and why are punts exciting? I love the punt, so I recommend reading those posts.

What is a kickoff specialist?

The only other time a football gets kicked during the game (on purpose, at least,) is at the start of each half and following any score, when one team kicks the ball to the other. Even with 53 people on a team, most NFL teams don’t employ a separate kicker just to kick kickoffs. It’s a relative luxury that in 2014 only the Buffalo Bills gave themselves. On most teams, the kicker kicks the kickoffs but there are a few punters who do it too.