The Patriots cut veteran kicker Mike Nugent this week after just four games in New England – his last effort against the Browns including a blocked 29-yard attempt and a 34-yard chance that flew wide left – and replaced him with veteran Nick Folk.
“I thought we needed to make a change,” Bill Belichick declared during his Wednesday morning press conference at Gillette Stadium.
Nugent hit 15 of 16 PATs in his four games and five of his eight field goal attempts, although Belichick never seemed comfortable having the limited veteran try a kick longer than 40 yards.
The 34-year-old Folk is a veteran of 154 games over 11 NFL seasons, most recently four games with Tampa Bay in 2017. He’s connected on 245 of 305 field goals (80.3 percent) over his career, but hit just six of 11 tries in that experience with the Bucs. He made a long kick of 50 yards or beyond in all 11 of his NFL seasons, including seven seasons playing outdoors in the northeast with the Jets.
“We’ll see how it goes. I haven’t seen much so far,” Belichick said of Folk’s arrival. “He’s had a very successful career. We’ll see where we are at.”
Belichick made it clear that Folk’s work in the short-lived, now-defunct AAF league this past spring – where he had a league-record 55-yard field goal – didn’t really play into his decision to give the former Cowboys, Jets and Bucs kicker a chance in New England.
“We worked him out,” Belichick said of Folk, before dismissing the AAF. “I’d say that’s probably more important than the World League or whatever it is.”
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