No, It’s Not Time for Packers to Smack the Panic Button, But …

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Green Bay Packers rookie kicker Trey Smack began a nine-kick set at OTAs on Tuesday by blasting an extra point straight through the uprights.

And then, his practice went south.

Well, more accurately, it went west.

From 35 yards toward the north end zone, he missed wide left.

Then, from 38 yards, he missed wide left. It wasn’t even close.

After making one from 40 yards, he shanked another one far to the left, this one from 42 yards.

Smack recovered by hitting from 43 before knocking one wide right from 46 yards.

The rookie bounced back to make his last two kicks to finish the day 5-of-9. The 47- and 48-yarders salvaged the period and were a happy ending to the first bit of adversity thrown at the team’s handpicked kicker.

However, that Smack struggled with a rather significant crosswind is, at least, noteworthy based on what special teams coordinator Cam Achord said last month.

“I don’t need a guy that can kick 65 yards personally, because we’re playing in Green Bay,” he said. “We’re going to play in elements and you’re not going to need the 60-yard ball all the time. You’re going to need the 45-yard ball with a 14-mile-an-hour crosswind, so his ball not moving and stuff like that was definitely a big part for me.”

The Packers are all-in on Smack. First, they traded two seventh-round picks to move up to the sixth round to draft him. Then, after handing Brandon McManus his $1 million roster bonus, they released him to make it a two-man kicking competition with Lucas Havrisik.

McManus had a dreadful playoff game against the Bears, to state the obvious, but he’s a proven kicker. Havrisik and Smack are not. It seemed premature to release McManus, other than to do the veteran a favor by giving him a chance to latch on somewhere else rather than toiling all summer in a competition with a rookie who the Packers want to win the job.

At the end of the day, maybe Tuesday’s bad day at Ray Nitschke Field will be nothing more than just that – a bad day. He wasn’t the first kicker to have a bad day and he won’t be the last. That’s why one poor performance in June isn’t time for the Packers to reach for the panic button.

The key will be bouncing back, and that Smack made his last two kicks is a good sign.

“I think it’s practice for a reason,” Smack said. “Everyone’s not perfect, so you’re going to miss some, you’re going to make some. The wind wasn’t really that big of a problem. It’s like, what I have to do to make the kick. So, the wind’s always going to be there, and I just got to make the kick.”

It was a mature response by the rookie. Kicker is the loneliest position in football. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. A miss can consume even the best kickers. In the NFL, coaches and players talk about having a “next-play mentality.” For a kicker, that next play might be in an hour. Or in a week. That’s a long time to stew on a bad kick, a long time for negative feelings to fester.

McManus in the playoff loss to Chicago let one miss become three, a fact that played a role in the decision to release him in favor of the rookie.

“It’s just kind of having a routine, and if you stick to that routine, it’s going to be the same every time,” Smack said. “You’ve got to be confident of who you are. It’s just your process, and how you deal with it.”

Smack has a strong leg but also a strong mind. That was an endearing trait that made him the first kicker drafted this year.

“He handles environments well,” renowned kicking coach Jamie Kohl told Packers On SI. “He’s not someone that is going to be naive to pressure. He’s not someone that hasn’t kicked in big games. He still has to get used to the NFL. Obviously, it is different. But, at the end of the day, I just think when you meet him, you talk to him, there’s a certain level of confidence that he exudes because he is level-headed – doesn’t get too high, doesn’t get too low – and he competes well.”

The Packers, obviously, want Smack to win the job. They wouldn’t have eaten the million bucks that wound up in McManus’ checking account if anything else were true.

However, it is fair to wonder if Smack struggled that much on a warm, breezy day in June, how’s he going to handle the howling winds of a cold December at Lambeau Field?

No, it’s not time to hit the panic button. Yet. But the door might have opened a bit for Havrisik, who has not kicked in either of the two practices open to reporters.

“It’s always been you versus you, you know?” Smack said of the decision to release McManus. “I think that’s just what I’ve always lived by and it’s just how I’m going to go about it.”

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