Green Bay's Kickers Entering a Big Week

Will the real Green Bay Packers' kicker please stand up?

I repeat.

Will the real Green Bay Packers' kicker please stand up?

Yes, the kicker situation in Green Bay has everyone invoking Marshall Mathers.

The Green Bay Packers were not satisfied with their kicker situation from a year ago.

Anders Carlson had his ups and downs but with more downs. He led the league in missed kicks, including a costly miss in the Packers' 24-21 loss in the NFC playoffs to the San Francisco 49ers.

After a full season of ignoring any questions about whether they would change kickers, the Packers may have admitted a mistake during the offseason.

“He’s got to improve,” Gutekunst said of Carlson. “That’s important. I thought he did some really good things this year and he improved as the year went on, but that’s going to be important, and competition is going to be part of that."

The competition was signed in the form of Greg Joseph.

The former Minnesota Vikings was brought in during free agency.

The hope had to be that one man, Carlson or Joseph, would separate himself enough to make the winner of the competition obvious.

Matt LaFleur has said several times that the kicking competition will go right down to the wire.

This appears to be true. The Packers recently signed Alex Hale to bring a third leg to the competition.

James Turner and Jack Podlesny also had brief cameos in Green Bay during the offseason.

By this point of training camp, the kicker competition remains unsettled.

The issue might be that the Packers could be looking at starting over altogether.

Greg Joseph has made 82 percent of his kicks in camp. Anders Carlson is at 80 percent.

This isn't like baseball where those would be great numbers.

82 percent is right about where Anders Carlson was last season on his field goals.

The Packers clearly were not satisfied with that as they've brought in as many kickers as they have this offseason.

Now, they're entering a spot where Anders Carlson's season began to turn a year ago.

Carlson was perfect in the early portion of the season.

The Broncos were Green Bay's first opponent after the bye.

Carlson would miss a field goal that day, his first of the year.

He'd miss 12 more kicks for the year, including the playoffs.

A big week in Denver could give Carlson the confidence needed to finish off this kicking competition in his favor.

On the other hand, Joseph is known for his big leg. He made a 61-yard field goal last year for the Vikings, and provides some steadiness as a veteran that Carlson simply has not proven to provide.

Last week the kickers divided the reps on both field goals, PAT's, and kickoffs.

This week, the assumption is that the Packers will do the same, but they need one kicker to bounce back and separate himself from the other.

The kickers both had a rough day on Tuesday.

Carlson was 4-6. Joseph was 3-7. Neither is inspiring much confidence at this point that they're ready to be a championship level kicker.

That is, in fact what the Packers are chasing.

Perhaps the lack of stability at kicker is something that could be tolerated a year ago when the team was in a transition year trying to figure out if Jordan Love was going to be the quarterback of the future.

Those questions are answered.

The Packers are Super Bowl contenders.

We've seen what happens when a contender has issues at kicker.

The Chicago Bears famously had a season end on a double-doink.

The Packers' season was derailed by kicker issues of their own.

It's time for someone to step up.

Who is it going to be?

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