Roberto Aguayo Faces The Pressure
I feel so bad for poor li’l Roberto.
Dude gets over-drafted to hell through no fault of his own, immediately putting far too many eyes on a rookie kicker. Kickers are a fungible, inconsistent yet very consistent position. I’ve used this argument before because Aguayo makes a good subject for it: basically the gap between a good kicker and a bad kicker is very small, at least when compared to other positions on the field. Kickers within that narrow range are completely inconsistent, they fluctuate year to year on who is good. This is why you should never draft a kicker before round 4, but drafting one in 4 and beyond makes a lot of sense. You’ll get a base level of quality from a kicker no matter what, but the upside isn’t worth the upside of other positions.
So Aguayo is over-drafted and has a rough year. Who knows why. Doesn’t really matter. If he was drafted late or not at all, no one would care. But because the Bucs are stupid and hyped him up with the pick, they are now under pressure to make sure the pick works out, which in turn puts even more pressure on Roberto. The Bucs bring in competition in Nick Folk, so now he might lose his job after one season (Highly unlikely, lets be honest, but Folk certainly isn’t going to give up easily). On top of that, the Bucs got selected for Hard Knocks. So you know what that means.
He’s gonna have a camera in his face, watching his every failed attempt, because you know goddamn well the kicker battle is going to be an important storyline for the season. If pressure is indeed the reason behind Aguayo’s bad season, he’s doomed. This is a recipe for disaster. We will all lap it up, because lol Bucs, but I do feel bad for the dude.
His dog is totally gonna get shot.
Whenever I think about kickers in the draft, I remember that pretty much every good kicker nowadays was undrafted. Tucker, Vinatieri, Bryant, Bailey, there are exceptions like Gostkowski, but the vast majority of good kickers were undrafted. Unless there’s a guy you know will be the next Vinatieri, I feel like it’s almost overdrafting until round six because of how much undrafted value there usually is.
Janikowski would disagree.
Lol
Says everything that under Philbin and Ireland we went from having Dan Carpenter, our most consistent K since Olindo Mare, to Caleb bloody Sturgis.
Franks is OK, but I wish we hadn’t got shot of Carp – especially to bloody Buffalo.
Agreed
And Ireland was a kicker to boot… though his performance against Rice in 1991 might have been foreshadowing his time as an executive.
Aguayo will be in Tampa next year, just not on the Bucs
Or Canada.
Or he’ll be in Canada
I feel bad for Roberto…should’ve played baseball
amen brah
I wonder if teams realize that kickers like Vinatieri and Tucker were undrafted. Do they really need to make a reach for a kicker?
Right about the difference between a good kicker and a bad kicker. I mean, look at Nick Folk! He had a stellar two years with the Cowboys (the infamous Monday game against the Bills in 2007) where he was damn near untouchable. Then… he had a bad few games, got cut, landed with the Jets and had been their primary kicker for 7 years. I still cheer for Folk. He’s probably the last decent player the Jets lost this season.
Okay; who calls him “Ro-boyi-to” from The Waterboy? That’s the best I could do on spelling Roberto in Cajunese