Special teams in football are just that, special. It’s a group of specialized athletes, each with a very specific skill set, who are called upon to perform at their best when the pressure is at its highest.
Special teams in football are just that, special.
It’s a group of specialized athletes, each with a specific skill set, called upon to perform at their best when the pressure is highest. But perhaps no position on special teams carries quite the same mental burden as the kicker.
TSN analyst and former Saskatchewan Roughriders safety and field-goal holder Glen Suitor knows firsthand that being a kicker is anything but easy. While the rest of the players on the field are battling through blocks, tackles and collisions, kickers can spend much of a game waiting for their moment. And when that moment arrives, there’s nowhere to hide.
“The kickers can kind of just do their own thing and may the best man win almost,” Suitor said. “That’s why it’s such a unique job in our game.”
Everyone else is getting involved in the physical battle.
“They’re getting banged up and back and forth and digging and tackling and blocking and all those things,” Suitor explained. “And these guys come out and sometimes you go, you know, all you need to do is do this one thing, just kick it.”
That simplicity, however, can be deceiving. The kicker may only be asked to perform one specific task, but the mental pressure that comes with it can be enormous.
While teammates spend the game battling in the trenches, kickers can be standing on the sideline with a clean uniform, waiting for a crucial opportunity that could ultimately decide the outcome.
“But the mental pressure they’re under and the fact that they are kind of just standing there with clean uniforms all game and then need to walk out in a crucial moment and those points are the difference, that’s immense pressure in a lot of ways,” Suitor said.
Suitor compares the position to the mental demands of another individual sport, golf.
“It’s really a mental game like a golf swing,” he said. “And as soon as you start getting in your own head.”
That’s when things can begin to unravel.
Suitor recalled conversations with former Roughriders kicker Dave Ridgway, who emphasized the importance of sticking with a routine and not allowing doubt to creep into the process.
“As soon as you start getting in your own head and you start to guess second, then you start to make adjustments to your routine and then it just, it’s a guessing game from there,” Suitor said.
For a kicker, confidence and consistency can be just as important as technique. The job may appear simple from the outside: line up, strike the ball and put it through the uprights. But when the game is on the line, and thousands of fans are watching, that one kick can become anything but simple. And that’s what makes the position so unique.
The physical battle may belong to the rest of the football team. But when the moment arrives, the kicker is often left alone with the football, the goalposts and the pressure.
And that’s Between The Lines for Sheppard Realty in Regina, specializing in farm and ranch real estate in Saskatchewan. Call Harry, Justin or Devan at 352-1866.