stretched. Because there were no kicking nets on the
sideline they couldn’t practice with an actual ball.
A half hour later Nagy called up Fry for a 43-yard
attempt with the full field goal unit in place. The sym-
bolism didn’t require an explanation. To layer additional
pressure, the loud music that played throughout the
day stopped and no one spoke. The effect was an eerie
stillness Nagy dubbed “Augusta silence,” an idea he’d
picked up watching the Masters.
Fry missed. He walked back to the sideline, and
Nagy carried on with practice. A few minutes later
he asked all the kickers to line up at the 50-yard line:
four on the right hash, four on the left. (Kjellsten, the
kicker-punter, punted and held for field goals but did
not take any kicks the first day.) They each attempted
a series of field goals, again, from 43.
“It’s the whole team, coaching staff, front office, all
the media watching,” says Carpenter.
They went in numerical order. Blewitt missed. Bed-
narski missed. Jones missed. Carpenter missed. Ulti-
mately, the group went a combined 2 for 8.
It wasn’t long before the search took on a sort of Rube
Goldberg feel—an unnecessarily complicated approach
to a routine position battle. It went beyond Augusta
silence kicks and the constant reminders of Parkey.
Jamie Kohl, an independent kicking coach, was hired
as a consultant. He and Tabor charted field goals and re-
corded data like apex, ball speed, distance traveled and
launch angle using TrackMan, a radar system widely
used by pro golfers to analyze their swings. (Chicago is
the first NFL team to use it to evaluate kickers.)
On the morning of the second day of rookie camp,
the kickers gathered around the whiteboard outside the
locker room, studying a sheet of paper taped next to
the special teams depth chart. It was a table of scores
and a ranking of how each had performed on day one.
They did some mental math to decode the scoring sys-
tem. The prevailing hypothesis: One point was awarded
for a made field goal, with those from long distances
worth more. Some kickers thought a point was added
for good ball rotation, but they weren’t entirely sure.
The list was a source of confusion rather than clarity.
The leader from day one was Fry, the rare success
story from the Alliance of American Football: He’d been
14 for 14 on field goals with the Orlando Apollos before
the league abruptly ceased operations last season. Each
kicker had a comment, in capital letters, next to his
field goal score. In second place: casey bednarski,
15 [points], ball trajectory is a major concern.
The comments were highly specific, often referenc-
ing data points recorded by the TrackMan radar panel
set up on a tripod behind the goal posts. In third:
john baron, 13 [points], improve fg and mph
off the foot.
“Why does [mph] even matter?” asks one kicker, who
requested anonymity. “If it’s going in, it’s going in.”
Outside of using the data to establish coaching points
with each kicker, Chicago did not share the TrackMan
measurements with any of the competitors. Increasing
the miles per hour or the rotational speed of a kick
is an obscure request already; without data to gauge
progress, it proved even more difficult.
The public scoring reminded many of the participants
of Kohl’s Kicking Camps. Kohl kicked at Iowa State from
1996 to ’98 and appeared in three preseason games with
the Seahawks before he turned to molding kickers. His
national rankings, which include only those who have
attended one of his clinics or camps, have become a
must for any kid seeking a college scholarship. Because
most NCAA coaches don’t know how to evaluate kick-
ers, they lean on Kohl’s rankings for recruiting. Kohl
will remain on Chicago’s staff throughout the season.
Several kickers at rookie camp either had never
worked with him or had only done so sparingly. They
expressed concern that Kohl’s evaluation process was
biased because of his prior relationships.