{"id":135319,"date":"2025-09-11T04:13:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T04:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/135319\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T04:13:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T04:13:07","slug":"who-is-the-commanders-kicker-why-washington-signed-former-soccer-star-matt-gay-for-2025-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/135319\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is the Commanders’ kicker? Why Washington signed former soccer star Matt Gay for 2025 season"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a Super Bowl on the goal sheet for this season, the Washington Commanders<\/a> knew they had to get their offseason roster moves right.<\/p>\n

That included signing a new kicker: Matt Gay.<\/p>\n

The 31-year old veteran has been all over the NFL after an athletic career that started as a promising soccer player.<\/p>\n

And now he’s doing his best to help the Commanders reach their big aspirations.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Kyle Hamilton nearly scored the first 1-point safety in NFL history<\/a><\/p>\n

Who is the Commanders’ kicker?<\/p>\n

The Washington Commanders’ kicker for the 2025 NFL season is Matt Gay.<\/p>\n

He’s a 31-year old who has also played for the Buccaneers, Colts and Rams.<\/p>\n

The Commanders had a revolving door at kicker in 2024, starting with Austin Seibert but also including Zane Gonzalez, Greg Joseph and Cade York.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0How Jacory Croskey-Merritt fell to the 7th round of the NFL Draft<\/a><\/p>\n

Why the Commanders signed kicker Matt Gay for 2025<\/p>\n

The Commanders simply wanted stability at a key position.<\/p>\n

Gay has bounced around, but he’s been solid in all of his stops.<\/p>\n

He has made 85.5% of his career field goal attempts. He also holds the NFL record for most 50-plus-yard field goals in the same game with four.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Jayden Daniels is NFL’s first Japanese quarterback in nearly 100 years<\/a><\/p>\n

Matt Gay’s soccer background<\/p>\n

The coolest part of Gay’s background is his soccer career.<\/p>\n

He was part of the United States’ national development academy’s program at the Under-17 level. He then went and played soccer for two years at Utah Valley.<\/p>\n

Only then did Gay transition to football full time as a walk-on for the Utah Utes.<\/p>\n

Gay was good enough in college that the Bucs made him a fifth-round pick in 2019, and he’s been in the NFL ever since.<\/p>\n

MORE NFL NEWS:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a Super Bowl on the goal sheet for this season, the Washington Commanders knew they had to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-135319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}