The Patriots Pick Up Younghoe. Also, Mike Nugent.

Mike Nugent:

Younghoe Koo:

Like I said when Stephen Gostkowski got IR’ed yesterday with what later turned out to be season-ending hip surgery, be careful what you wish for. This is what talk radio and more than half of my friends have been dreaming of for a couple of years at least. That the 3rd most accurate kicker of all time:

… be replaced with the best available option out of the population of out-of-work placekickers. In the case of Nugent, it’s the 43rd most accurate kicker of all time, who, at 37-years-old, is two years older than Gostkowski. And since missed extra points are the thing that made people lose faith in Gostkowski, it’s worth pointing out that in Nugent’s last three seasons, he connected on only 42 of 51 XP attempts, or 82.3%.

As for Younghoe Koo, he’s 25. But hasn’t kicked in the league since Week 4 of 2017, when he was released by the Chargers after missing 3 of 6 field goals. Starting a string of four different kickers the Chargers tried on the season.

But still, there’s no getting around it. These are the kinds of choices that are available to you when you’re kicker everyone’s so frustrated with goes down for the year. You end up choosing from the least worst among the unemployed and hope you get lucky somehow. You grab a long time Jets and Bengals kicker and hope he sticks it up their asses when you play them later in the season.

And for insurance, you sign the guy with the best possible name for the Patriots in 2019 (pronounced YOUNG-way, but work with me here). Despite his brief history of failure in the pros.

And you pray that they don’t cost you a game. And that somehow being able to knock over barrels or do a back flip while kicking a ball off the ground are worthy skills to have. I’m not confident. But let’s call this one of the rare times where I’ll be happy to be wrong.

P.S. I’m rooting for Younghoe to be the guy. Just for the blog headlines that will write themselves.