NFL Training Camps: Here’s the kicker

By the time NFL rosters are cut down to the mandatory 53, you can bet on seeing new kickers in new places.  Success or failure in previous stops seems to have little to do with landing a job in a new place.  Such is the life of a kicker.  Ask Shaun Suisham, who recently signed a contract extension with the Pittsburgh Steelers.  He was having a great year for the Redskins in 2009 when he missed a 23-yarder that could have beaten the 11-0 Saints.  New Orleans came back to win in overtime and Suisham was cut.  He immediately latched on with Pittsburgh and kicked in the Super Bowl two months later.

Covering the Giants in 1990, I saw them draft Matt Stover from Louisiana Tech in the 12th round.  He was impressive in camp, but coach BillParcells elected to go with veteran RaulAllegre.  Three games into the season,Allegre pulled a muscle andwas replaced by Matt Bahr, whohad been cut by the Cleveland Browns.  Bahr went on to help kick the Giants to the Super Bowl championship.  His replacement in Cleveland, former Canadianleaguer, JerryKauric, lasted one year.  Kauric’s replacement?  You guessed it – Matt Stover, who lasted 19 years, going with the Browns to Baltimore, where he helped kick the Ravens to a Super Bowl championship over the Giants.  I mean, this is better than six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

More than anything else, a kicker needs to learn to be a survivor.  Mark Moseley was a survivor.  The last straight-on kicker to roam the earth, Moseley was drafted by Philadelphia in the 14th round in 1970 out of Stephen F Austin.  After a year in Philly, he landed in Houston and was good enough to be brought back for a second season with the Oilers in 1972.  In the opener, Moseley missed a kick, but it didn’t cost Houston the game.  Yet the next day when he ran into coach Bill Peterson in the parking lot, Peterson told Moseley he’d had a dream that he’d waived his young kicker.  Incredibly he decided to make the dream into a reality and waived Moseley.

Out of work the rest of ’72 and all of the 1973 season, Moseley was ready to pack it in.  Then the stars lined up just right.  There was an NFL Players Association strike to start the 1974 preseason.  That left teams to get through training camp and exhibition games with rookies and anybody not part of the NFLPA.  Since Moseley had been out of work the season before, he was not a union member.  Redskins coach George Allen brought Moseley to camp, where he met up with another player who had pro experience, but wasn’t yet part of the union.  Joe Theismann had spent the previous three years playing in Canada, but hadn’t yet taken a snap in the NFL.

Moseley and Theismann not only made the team, they would later make history together.  However it was history that almost didn’t happen.  After missing 11 of 30 attempts in 1981, the Redskins decided to push their veteran kicker for his job.  Dan Miller was taken in the 11th round of the 1982 draft out of Miami.  Going into the final preseason game, it had become Miller’s job to lose.  He was handed the kicking duties for the final preseason game at Cincinnati.  But after missing two field goal attempts in a 28-21 loss, there was enough doubt to keep Moseley on the roster.

Miller stayed on the team, but a last-minute decision was made to go with Moseley in the season opener at Philadelphia.  Good move. His 48-yarder at the gun sent the game into overtime and his 26-yarder was the game winner.  Bye bye Dan Miller.  The Redskins would go on to win their next game, but a players strike knocked out the next two months.  By the time the players got back on the field, nobody really noticed that Moseley was six for six in 1982.

The post-strike Redskins lost their second game back to Dallas, but rolled right along to mid December with a record of 5-1, while Moseley continued to be perfect on field goals.  With the adjusted playoff format, a win at home against the Giants would put them in the postseason.  With less than seven minutes to play and snow falling, Moseley kicked a 31-yarder to bring the Redskins within two at 14-12.  The kick was number 20 in a row, tying Garo Yepremian’s NFL record for consecutive field goals made.  The defense held, giving the Redskins one last shot.  With seconds to play, snow falling harder than it had been all day, with the game, the playoffs and the record on the line, Theismann, now in his eighth year of holding for Moseley, put his knee down on the 32-yard line of New York.  The snap was good, the hold was good and despite Byron Hunt getting a fingertip on the ball, it wobbled through the uprights for all the marbles.  Kicker and holder embraced in muddy hug.

The Redskins went on to win the Super Bowl and Moseley became the one and only pure kicker to be named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player.  Imagine what would have happened if Miller hadn’t missed those two preseason kicks.

No kicking chronicle can be complete without the tale of “Booth” Lusteg.  It begins with the historic move by Pete Gogolak, who was the first soccer-style kicker in pro football history.  Gogolak joined the Buffalo Bills of the AFL out of Cornell in 1964.  After two years in Buffalo, Gogolak became the first player to jump from the upstart AFL to the established NFL, when he was signed by the New York Giants.  That opened the floodgates for raids of star players from each league.  It ultimately led to the merger agreement.

Anyway, with Gogolak gone after the 1965 season, the Bills decided to have an open tryout to find his replacement.  Over a hundred showed up, including a German bricklayer and a man with one eye and one arm.  The survivor was quite a story himself.  Gerry Lusteg had grown up in Connecticut, playing only one year of high school football.  And he wasn’t even the kicker.  Nearing the age of 28 and struggling to try and make it as an actor, he came up with the brilliant idea of becoming a kicker.  He gave himself the name “Booth” because he thought it sounded like the name of a kicker, and taught himself to kick well enough to catch on with a semi-pro team in Boston for a season.

Incredibly, he opened the 1966 season as the Bills’ kicker.  Although, he wasn’t very good, missing half his attempts that season.  The low point occurred on October 16th during a home game against San Diego.  In a 17-17 game, Lusteg was brought on in the final seconds to attempt a 23-yard field goal to win it.  The kick sailed wide right and the game ended in a tie.  Lusteg was so distraught, he decided he would just walk home.

When he was a few blocks from the stadium, a car pulled up and four angry Bills fans jumped out.  One asked, “Are you Booth Lusteg?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” he said.

Without pause, the fan punched him in nose, jumped in the car and sped off with his buddies.  A day later it came to the attention of the Bills after a witness had filed a police report.  A team official asked Lusteg if indeed the incident had occurred.  Lusteg said, “of course.”

Asked why he didn’t tell the police, Lusteg said, “I didn’t tell them because I had it coming.”

Such is the life of an NFL kicker.