After waiving Grupe before the Dolphins game, the Saints did add veteran kicker Cade York to their practice squad.<\/p>\n
But Smyth, a product of the NFL’s international player pathway programme, was the kicker selected for duty and impressed head coach Kellen Moore with his debut performance.<\/p>\n
“Charlie, I thought, kicked really well. Big-time field goal. The onside kick obviously was really well-kicked. Phenomenal kick there and put us in a position to have a chance at the end,” Moore said after the defeat.<\/p>\n
Smyth signed his first contract with the Saints in March 2024 and has had to bide his time over the past 18 months for his first chance in a regular season game.<\/p>\n
“Charlie’s earned this opportunity. We have a lot of confidence in him. He’s worked at this thing for a number of years now. <\/p>\n
“He’s prepared himself really well. We have a lot of confidence in him. He obviously has the leg to make some big-time kicks. <\/p>\n
“That was a challenging situation, but it was a situation we needed to get some points there and he drilled it, and it was a phenomenal kick by him.”<\/p>\n
Smyth is hoping this is the start of something special in New Orleans.<\/p>\n
“It took a long time and it obviously means ‘I feel ready, I feel ready.’ But the coaches, they know what they’re doing. They’re really, really good. <\/p>\n
“Obviously we didn’t envision it being like this because Blake [Grupe] has been so good and I have learned so much from him. Tuesday was strange emotions because you saw your opportunity potentially coming up but then seeing him out was tough because we’re friends. <\/p>\n
“At the end of the day, you get your head right and I was buzzing and then on Thursday, it was kind of a big day and I kicked really well. I was just excited to get the opportunity and to be honest, I’m kind of hiding it a little bit, I was absolutely buzzing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After waiving Grupe before the Dolphins game, the Saints did add veteran kicker Cade York to their practice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-318213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318213","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=318213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}