The Los Angeles Rams have cycled through three kickers in seven days—a sequence that suggests systemic dysfunction rather than simple misfortune.
It started with Harrison Mevis, whom the Rams had trusted through most of the season until he pushed a 48-yard field goal attempt wide in overtime against Buffalo. The loss prompted general manager Les Snead to waive Mevis immediately and sign Blake Grupe as an emergency replacement.
Greupe showed early promise. On his debut Sunday against Arizona, he connected on a 44-yard field goal on the Rams' opening drive. Then came the kickoff.
On the next play, Grupe lined up on special teams coverage. When Cardinals returner Devin Duvernay broke through, the 5-foot-7 kicker made an aggressive decision to make the tackle himself. The collision was hard. Grupe went down on all fours in distress. Trainers escorted him to the locker room with a knee injury. He was ruled doubtful to return.
Without a backup kicker on the active roster, head coach Sean McVay improvised: punter Ethan Evans, who has never attempted an NFL field goal, began taking practice reps. The Rams would need to shift to aggressive fourth-down conversions rather than relying on field goal attempts.
By the next morning, Snead was hunting for a third kicker.
On the surface, this appears to be a freak accident. A new kicker doing his job suffers an injury. But the accountability question sits upstream: How did the Rams end up with no qualified backup kicker? How did the evaluation process fail so completely that one miss triggered a complete teardown?
One missed kick in one high-pressure moment shouldn't necessitate an immediate waiver in a vacuum. That it did suggests either the Rams lacked confidence in Mevis before Buffalo or they panicked without adequate contingency planning.
Professional football teams typically maintain depth at every position. That the Rams had no NFL-qualified backup ready for an emergency isn't a sign of being caught off guard by an unusual injury pattern—it's a sign of incomplete planning.
The records show Mevis had been a solid contributor before the Buffalo game. The speed with which Snead moved suggests reactivity rather than strategy.
Greupe's injury then compounds the problem. It wasn't a coaching error or a player executing routine tasks incorrectly. A kicker doing what defensive players do on kickoff coverage paid the price. This raises questions about risk management: Is it prudent to deploy a kicker—a specialized offensive weapon—as a defensive asset on every kickoff?
The Rams now face a third consecutive search for a kicker, with Evans as the only backup option. McVay will need to adjust his game plan to rely more heavily on fourth-down conversions, a significant strategic constraint. Every third-down situation becomes more complex without a reliable field goal option.
The situation demands examination. Was there a lack of due diligence in vetting Grupe before signing him? Did the front office have contingency plans? Did anyone war-game scenarios like a new kicker getting injured on his second play?
For now, the Rams will search the market for their third kicker in a week. Evans will prepare as an emergency backup. McVay will game-plan without the luxury of reliable field goal options. The sequence of events—the panic after Mevis's miss, the hasty signing of Grupe, the lack of backup depth, the injury on the kickoff—offers lessons about how front offices make decisions under pressure and whether those decisions tend to solve problems or create new ones.
