Jaguars' K Matthew Wright Named AFC Special Teams Player of Week 6
The Matthew Wright hero tour continued on Wednesday, with the Jacksonville Jaguars' kicker earning AFC Special Teams Player of the Week to cap off a four-day stretch of celebration.
Wright was given the honors following a stupendous performance against the Miami Dolphins in the Jaguars' 23-20 win in London, snapping the Jaguars' franchise-record 20-game losing streak. Wright was 3-of-3 on field goals against Miami (40, 54, 53), making the game-tying kick and the game-winning kick within 4:00 of each other.
Wright is the 12th player in franchise history to win AFC Special Teams Player of the Week and the first to do so since 2019 when former kicker Josh Lambo won the award. Wright's 54-yard game-tying field goal was a career-long, while his game-winning 53-yard field goal as time expired made him the first kicker in NFL history to make multiple field goals of 50-plus yards in the last 4 minutes of the fourth quarter in a single game. He also became the first kicker in franchise history to connect on two-50-plus yard field goals in the fourth quarter of a single game.
Wright is now moving forward as the Jaguars' full-time kicker following Lambo's release on Tuesday. Wright has appeared in three games with the Jaguars, with the former UCF and Pittsburgh Steelers kicker now finding solid footing atop the team's depth chart.
Wright's three field goals in Week 6 were the first three the Jaguars made as a team in 2021. Now, Wright will get a chance to continue to show that his clutch kicking in London is just a taste of what is to come.
“I had no doubt in my mind. I do not even watch the field goals. You know someone could ask me – you know it was Tre Herndon who asked ‘Hey man you think Matty [K Matthew Wright] is going to make this?’ I said, ‘Ice Ice Baby? Oh Yeah, Matty Ice is going to make that I am not nervous,'" Jaguars cornerback Shaquill Griffin said on Tuesday when asked about Wright's heroics.
"You know that is someone I played with back in college and who we had truly had a lot of confidence for. That has not changed and every time I see Matty I have no problem because I know he is going to make it, no doubt in my mind. Everyone stood up on the sideline and I was the only one sitting on the bench knowing he was going to make it. I had no doubt in my mind. That is Ice Ice Baby and he is going to make it every single time.”
