Tue
09
Nov
2010
Any fan of football who keeps up with the rise and fall of the various franchises surely knows that the San Diego Chargers have been on a roll over the last few seasons. Winners of their Western
AFC division for four years running, the team has been seeing its best days since the hallowed glory of the early Sixties. Unfortunately, their postseason record has failed to lead to a Super
Bowl win. For many fans, the majority of blame for that fact can be traced directly to the man responsible for kicking the ball through the uprights on field goal attempts: kicker Nate
Kaeding.
The Iowa Native
Chosen by the Chargers fresh out of the draft in 2004, San Diego fans had high hopes for Kaeding. He was a part of the now famous Manning/Rivers deal that saw the Giants give San Diego Philip
Rivers and several high picks in exchange for Manning. There were reasons enough to believe that Kaeding could fulfill his role as kicker: as the kicker for the Iowa Hawkeyes, he was called
Mister Automatic since he rarely missed. From 40 or more yards, he was one of the best in all of college football, with career totals of twenty nine attempts and only five misses. His senior year
saw him miss but one from that range. There was little reason to even suspect that his steady leg would do anything but garner the same results for his new team in the National Football
League.
Winning records
It's not like Kaeding has had a rough time with his regular season kicking game. He became the NFL's top kicker in the accuracy department as of the 2009 campaign, compiling a statistical success
rate of nearly ninety percent since coming into the League. In that respect, he has had identical results to those he achieved as a college kicker in his Iowa career. As a Charger, he even had a
season in which he made nearly every field goal he kicked - only three misses in his sixteen games. Fans forget all about that, though, since none of that gets to the heart of their concern: the
man gives no indication that he can ever make the crucial kick when the season is on the line.
The bad
The list of playoff field goal misses is heartbreaking for Chargers fans. There is the 54 yard attempt that cost the team a 2006 playoff game versus the Patriots. And the 2007 playoff misses
against the Colts and Titans. Though the Chargers won those games (only to then lose to New England in the Championship game of the AFC) the memory of the misses still roils the team's fans. Of
course, the most painful miss of all came in last year's playoffs when Kaeding erred on all three attempts of the game, giving the Jets a three-point victory. As any Charger fan would point out,
making even one of those attempts would have resulted in a tie and overtime.
As it stands, the team's supporters think of Kaeding as someone who chokes in big situations. Though his fans in Iowa City would vehemently disagree, there is little doubt that he will continue
to wear that mantle until he demonstrates with his leg exactly why Iowa fans called him Mister Automatic in the first place.
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