Preseason Puts Kicker Competition Center Stage

NASHVILLE – In three seasons as head coach, Mike Vrabel has directed the Tennessee Titans in eight preseason games. There were four each in 2018 and 2019 before the league opted to do without such contests last year.

Things will be different this year, and not just because the preseason schedule has been reduced to three weeks.

Expect Vrabel to be far more conservative on fourth down than he typically has been at this time of year. It will be a necessary adjustment given that the Titans need to figure out who is their kicker, and the best way to do so will be to let the current candidates, Tucker McCann and Sam Ficken, show what they can do.

“We have to find opportunities,” Vrabel said early in camp. “Where the extra point is, those are just as important. That is a (32)-yard kick and so [it is] making sure … that we are evaluating those guys in the game. … We are going to find as many opportunities as we can to get these guys to kick during the preseason as we can.”

It is a competition even the most novice football fan can judge. Who makes his kicks? Who does not? Who gets his kickoffs to the end zone? Who does not? Who makes the longest field goal? Who doesn’t show much of a leg?

There are ways to increase the opportunities for evaluation.

In his eight preseason games to date, Vrabel has elected to go for it on fourth down 13 times, which is nearly twice the number of field goal attempts (seven). In 2018, the Titans went for it eight times and attempted just two field goals. In 2019, it was an even mix of five apiece.

In those years Ryan Succop was established as the kicker, and in certain areas of the field fourth down was as much an opportunity to experiment on offense as it was a chance to put points on the board. Succop made all six of his attempts, including four in 2019 before he started the season on injured reserve. The lone miss was by Austin Barnard, a punter.

This year Vrabel and the rest of the team’s brain trust must choose between Tucker McCann, an undrafted rookie in 2020 who never has kicked in an NFL game (regular season or preseason), and Sam Ficken, who started training camp with the New York Jets but was released less than a week into it.

McCann already outlasted Blake Haubeil, an undrafted rookie who had been with the Titans throughout the offseason, and has improved his performance in practice since Ficken’s arrival via a waiver claim.

“I love competing,” McCann said. “So, I just think it makes me better as a kicker. I’m just trying to compete every day. … I have a high expectation for myself, and I’m trying to be the guy that this team needs.”

Ficken, undrafted in 2015, waited through two full seasons and most of a third before he got his first opportunity in a game that counts. Since, however, he has seen action in four straight regular seasons courtesy of two different teams. His best run came in 2018, when he took over the job with the Jets in Week 2 and held it for the remainder of that campaign.

Last season, he missed six games (three at a time twice) due to a groin injury but still was the Jets’ leading scorer.

“It’s not the first time I’ve been cut and claimed,” Ficken said. “This time was a little more surprising than the last, you know, being there for two years. This is the NFL. Crazy stuff happens. So, you kind of always have to stay on your toes.

“… I think anytime you’re given an opportunity at my position you want to go in and make your kicks.”

The two have kicked in front of coaches and teammates almost daily in practices. Their relative strengths and weaknesses have been discussed in personnel meetings. Undoubtedly, each has compared himself to the other.

Games – even preseason ones – present a completely different set of challenges, though.

“The timing, the speed off the edge that we are going to get [from the other team] in the preseason, the jumper technique that those guys are going to have to block as tight ends and wings because it is hard to practice that out here,” Vrabel said. “That play, guys are going on the ground and getting a push to where we (need) some rise on the football that you are going to get in a game.”

Only in a game. So it is that in order for him to choose a kicker he must make some different choices during the preseason.