Crosby and his issues

You're right. Let's just pretend he didn't make 46 of 56 attempts during the 2010 and 2011 seasons. Let's pretend he didn't make 86% of his kicks last year. Let's just forget about him making 17 straight FGs going back to last season and instead let's just look at the slump he's had in the last month as the only true representation of his ability to kick a football. The previous two YEARS were all an illusion. Yeah... that sounds smart.

^ 6 weeks straight constitutes more than a slump.....

It's been 5 games, not 6. Either way, it doesn't erase 2 years of excellence. Other guys have kicked their way out of slumps and so will he.

It's a good thing we have smarter football minds than yours in charge. He's not terrible, our FG unit was in a slump. End of story. Get over it already.

Have you ever been part of a college or pro FG unit? I doubt you'd know a bad hold if it smacked you in the ***.

The majority of high school FG attempts are less than 30 yards and most of HS kickers never attempt anything past 35 yards.

I think you're confused. I never said I was. I merely said you WEREN'T. Regardless, if nothing else, I would bet a good penny that I know more of what goes into a FG than you ever will. I held for 3 years in college and learned basically everything they teach NFL kickers, holders and long snappers at Al Del Greco's kicking camp in 1993 and again in 1994. So don't accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about regarding kicking on a high level. Crosby and Masthay have BOTH had their issues the past 6 weeks and they BOTH need to correct it. Crosby will be fine. If GMs were as impatient as fans, there would be no team-building. If they don't get it ironed out by the end of the season, someone will probably be brought in to compete. But I don't see a single kicker available who is better.

Exactly! As a ex-kicker myself, even pushing the ball too hard into the ground can cause an easy miss.

Then you understand how much it harder it is on the kicker when the holder places the ball 2 or 3 inches off from where they mark the spot on the ground. You're relying on that ball being placed right there and when it's not you have only a split second to adjust your kick. And if the placement is late, well...

(I wasn't the one arguing with you before lol I was just giving my input (if you thought that)) lol
But yes, I do. Hitting the ball just a centimeter off the ball too can be the difference between in between the uprights and completely missing the field goal.

Yeah, I knew you weren't arguing. Didn't mean for it to sound otherwise.

I was just making sure ... But anyways, Crosby will come around sooner or later.

Yes he will. Just like Gary Anderson did after a horrible stretch in '86. Happened to Del Greco a couple of times in his career. I bet I could compile a list of at least a dozen QUALITY kickers who had similar streaks to what Crosby & Co. are working through.

There was plenty of blame to go round on that game. Yes, we can blame Crosby. We can also blame Clay Matthews for not wrapping up the QB when he had him in his grasp - this would have won the game for us too. Rodgers threw a really bad interception setting up Indy for a TD. Play calling was amiss as well as a bunch of other things. This was a complete team failure to squander a big lead at half.

I'm not blind. I can use my damn eyes to make my own judgments. I don't mind being corrected, but I'm not stupid.

That was one game, and the holds looked fine in that game. He was 3-7 from the Jaguars game to the first Lions game. About half of the holds in that game were pretty far off. Of the ones he missed, only 1 hold looked good. But then again, I guess you know better, don't you?

No, I've been there an done that over 140 times, so I speak from both training AND experience and I know what I'm looking at when I look at the kicks. Not sure why Slocum would put it 100% all on Crosby. Perhaps that's the way they want to play it to the media.

[ naive ] Or do you think coaches always offer full disclosure on everything?[ /naive ]

If the snap or the hold were consistently the reasons for misses or the reason for a particularly important miss, I'd expect LS Goode and/or holder Masthay to stand up and say so thus deflecting the blame away from Crosby. If Goode and/or Masthay were the reason for a miss, I'd expect the STs coach to point that out, thus deflecting some of the heat away from Crosby. But there hasn't been even the slightest hint that the problem is anything but Crosby. Considering the volume and intensity of criticism directed solely at Crosby, IMO that's telling.

Jeez guys, we`re supposed to be on the same side here. Everybody has an opinion and is entitled to express it. Lets calm down a bit.

Evaluating whether a coach or management is "lying" is situational. If you can identify an edge in doing so, then the "lying" argument is plausible. In this case, I agree that placing blame on one guy while knowing the blame belongs elsewhere provides no identifiable advantage.

He just made a 48 or 49 yarder. He's been making kicks lately, and I'm sure one day soon he'll nail a 50+ when we need him to. This "what have you done lately" attitude is crap and is really ticking me off

Like YOU said, his comments were after the COLTS GAME, which was very early on.

And you don't have to trust anyone on anything. You're free to think whatever you want, but don't tell me I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

I don't appreciate your not-so-veiled implication that I'm lying about my own experiences. Surely you can do better than that. How about you go back, look at all the kicks with your own eyes and tell me why I'm wrong, using your own expertise?

Don't understand why some go out of their way to defend a FG kicker that has really never been a "clutch" kicker. Going into this last season I think Mason Crosby was 1-4 in game winning kicks in his career. It seems like constantly throughout his career Mason is relearning how to kick it without going out of bounds, learning how to be more than a horrible long distance FG kicker, and being probably the most mentally fragile Green Bay Packer of my lifetime. Nope, don't understand it at all.

Someone that can't be relied on is a weakness, no?

Totally agree. And the kicking is really mental.
Longwell had one bad year with us in 2005 which had a lot to do with the holder he had.
Aside from that Crosby has all the ability. But mentally he just plain does not have it.
He hit a game winner from 36 in his first game in 2007 to beat Philly. But he was the new kid in town.
Replacing Dave Rayner you can only get better.

In 2008 and 2009 he was certainly marginal. He missed a game winner in the Metrodome that Vinitieri made from the same distance against the Vikings to beat them a month earlier.
He missed a big one down in Tennessee that may have kept us from an OT loss. In 2010 and 2o11 he made some terrific kicks. But none of them were so significant that the game was on the line.
Even the winner to beat the Giants last year was only 32 yards. And if we'd have gone to OT and lost it was no big deal. We were already 11-0 and had our seat placed for the post season.

The key misses this season were at Indy. If he just could have made one. I can understand missing at Lambeau especially in the wind and snow. But indoors? That is a kicker's dream. It's like free throw practice in the modern game.