Report: The Patriots are Releasing 5th Round Rookie K Justin Rohrwasser. For Now.

Welp. Someone on the Patriots scouting staff has got some explaining to do. Someone pushed for this pick. A guy who’s name was nowhere to be found on any pre-draft resource I looked at. That one of the national  draft pundits said was the first pick off the board that he had never heard of. Yet some scout thought enough of that he went to bat for him and recommended he’d be the worthy successor to Stephen Gostkowski. To the point GM Belichick (or Nike the Dog) decided he couldn’t risk signing him as a UDFA, but had to have him at 159th overall.

And yet Rohrwasser couldn’t even make it out of camp and loses the Kicking competition to Nick Folk, who was a free agent in the middle of last season, is probably old enough to be leaning on an aluminum cane with four tennis balls on the bottom as he kicks. Heads are gonna roll on this one.

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The thing about kickers is theirs is the ultimate results-oriented meritocracy. There’s no opinion. It’s not about how someone looks, intangibles or measuring their heart. It’s like golf. How good you are is on the scorecard. As Yoda says, do or do not. There is no try. Which makes this blown pick all the more frustrating.

All the team got in return for this pick is a few days of controversy over a tattoo no one in the organization paid attention to, Rohrwasser going on TV to tearfully say he’s getting it removed, and him wearing long sleeves to hide it all summer while getting his kicks kicked into the dirt by Big Dick Nick. Well, at least now he’s free to get all the ink he wants, I guess.

*Note: Please disregard all of this if the rookie makes his way onto the expanded practice squad and ends up as our starter later this year or next.