Your mileage may vary after the Jets’ Week 1 loss to Baltimore, but there is one thing you can truly say “same old Jets” about after Sunday: the kicking game may, in fact, be cursed.
The Jets used three kickers last season and have had a different opening day kicker in each of the last seven seasons, but the situation was supposed to be rectified when the Jets signed former Ram and Cowboy Greg Zuerlein to be their kicker this season.
The result: “Greg the Leg” missed his first attempt as a Jet, a 45-yarder that went wide left, made a 45-yarder late in the first half that snuck through the uprights to give the Jets their first points of the season…and then missed a PAT in the final minute to keep the score at 24-9.
The line was Ravens -5.5 so even those four points didn’t hurt the bettors, but they certainly hurt the perception of a Jets kicking game that has been less than stellar for a long while – although head coach Robert Saleh thinks Zuerlein will be fine.
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“He’s a veteran, I think he’ll bounce back,” Saleh said. “I’m not worried about Z; not his best day, but I’m very confident he’ll bounce back just fine.”
Zuerlein made his name as a Ram, nailing a slew of long kicks that earned him his nickname – including a walk-off 57-yarder in overtime of the 2019 NFC Championship Game that sent the Rams to Super Bowl LIII. He has made 82 percent of his career field goal attempts and 96 percent of PATs, but he was cut by the Cowboys as a cap casualty this past offseason, and came to New York and beat out Eddy Pineiro to win the Jets job in camp.
“We opened it up for competition and ‘Z’ beat him fair and square,” Saleh said.
Ironically, Pineiro hit all three of his PATs and made a 34-yard field goal for Carolina in their Week 1 loss to the Browns – and he was only brought in by the Panthers two weeks ago after Zane Gonzalez suffered a season-ending quad injury during the preseason.
Pineiro was 8-for-8 on field goals and made nine of 10 PAT for the Jets last year, steadying (or so it seemed) a kicking game that saw Matt Ammendola get cut after going 13-for-19 on field goals, and replacement Alex Kessman last just one week that saw two missed PATs.
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