Rayner's Mis-Aimers

***Update*** How the hell does Chris at Arrowhead Pride do it? They always seem to catch that tidbit to the story that I hadn’t heard. They’re reporting (via KFFL) that Rayner should be released and replaced soon by Billy Cundiff, Nick Novak, or John Carney. I don’t care who–just do it.***

While no NFL game can ever be boiled down to one, single, individual play, it seems that a lot of the blame for yesterday’s loss is due to the inconsistency of kicker Dave Rayner. After missing a 33-yarder in the third quarter, coach Herm Edwards elected not to attempt a 41-yard field goal to tie up the game late in the fourth, but to risk it on fourth down. He later explained:

“At that point in time [on the spot call] I wasn’t going to put that pressure on him… Probably in the last couple of weeks if he hadn’t missed the ones he’s missed. He’s missed some. It was just too much pressure at that point in the game…”

I agree Rayner is a dumbshit bad kicker, sure. However, it still seemed like a pretty crazy idea at the time not to kick the ball. Against a Raiders team they hadn’t stopped all day, shouldn’t the Chiefs had just tried to get something on the board? I mean, he’d only missed 1 kick all day. However, after looking at his stats for the season, running for a yard seems even now like the better bet.

5/9 from behind the 40-yard line all season? Seems like another miss was destined to come. I find it interesting that almost all of Rayner’s misses have come from hooking the ball wide left. This seems like a pretty straight-forward problem to fix–I turn my body slightly to the left when I golf because I slice right, so Rayner should “shoot” a bit more to the right, right?

Either way, something’s got to be done. Six games (or seven, if you count J-Med‘s forgettable opener) have been affected by missed field goals, and it’s about time for someone to do something about it. I, for one, volunteer to be the guy to call Mike Vanderjagt.

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