Arrowhead Pride
On Wednesday, Kansas City’s special teams coach took the blame for his placekicker missing a 29-yard field goal.
Before Sunday’s game against the Cleveland Browns, the Kansas City Chiefs’ placekicker Harrison Butker had missed four games after tearing the meniscus in his left knee.
Speaking to the media on Wednesday afternoon, Kansas City’s special teams coordinator Dave Toub said that while Butker isn’t quite back to 100%, he was close enough that the team had been comfortable bringing him back for the Cleveland game — and releasing Matthew Wright, who filled in during Butker’s absence.
“He’s looked good in practice,” said Toub of Butker. “He looked good before that game.”
But right at the end of Sunday’s first half, Butker missed a 29-yard field goal attempt — a kick he would usually nail. While there was immediate speculation that Butker had been brought back from his injury too soon, Toub insisted that the placekicker’s miss was his fault. As noted during the TV broadcast, holder Matt Araiza and long snapper James Winchester weren’t with Butker and ready to go — which disturbed the timing of their carefully-rehearsed routine.
“I need to do a better job of communicating to the holder and the snapper,” explained Toub. “We were going to kick the field goal. I just assumed that they were together — but they weren’t. And that was my fault. So [there was a] little bit of change where Harrison’s panicking, [saying], ‘Where are they?’
“It wasn’t his injury. I don’t think that had anything to do with it. I just think anytime you get an operation out of sync like that — [where] they have to rush or somebody’s not there — that puts a toll on it. And I think that’s what happened there.
“I’ll take the blame. That was my fault.”
Adding to the speculation about the placekicker’s readiness was something else noted during the broadcast: after kicking the ball, Butker’s left knee buckled.
But according to Toub, this was simply business as usual for Butker: he has an unorthodox follow-through where he allows his plant leg to buckle, putting his knee on the ground.
“His technique is to break [as] his leg comes down,” said Toub. “People are just noticing now because it’s his knee... But all year long, his technique is to collapse that leg after he follows through.”
Toub said that Butker began buckling his knee in response to the ankle injury he suffered in Week 1 of 2022.
“That’s something that’s developed over time,” noted Toub. “You can’t just change your technique because you got injured all of a sudden... So he’s going to keep the same technique. And that’s that’s all that was right there.”
Just as he had done while Wright was filling in for Butker, safety Justin Reid continued to do kickoffs in Cleveland. And while Butker is now ready to resume doing that part of his job, the team is in no rush to completely move on from Reid.
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