does the kicker even see him? this is stretching it

 

Hes a rookie. Its kind of the equivalent of a QB hearing footsteps in the pocket.

 

But they tried to block kicks in college too.

I feel like this is Rizzi's way of saying they didn't win by luck...even though they did.

 

we should have never been in this predicament . defense was struggling and they wire out there with 1:15 left

 

This is a pretty homer eyed post. We got lucky.

Also, I have no idea why teams put the ball in the middle of the field for kickers. It makes no sense that you purposely give your kicker less of a margin of error to each side. You would think the kickers would like the ball on one of the hash marks.

 

We do create our own luck in football, sometimes. What appears to be "Luck" to the average fan, the expert will see that there are hundreds (at least) of moving parts on every play that should be factored in when making an evaluation. So many. Math can not solve the NFL yet. That is why I disregard stats for the most part, unless we are discussing an actual play we can review, rewind, review, and have an honest discussion. You can't just throw yesterday's stats out there and claim that person had a good game unless you watched every play. Stats are great. But, the eye test is always best, if that person is an expert evaluator.

 

I agree that we got lucky.

However i don't agree with the rest. Looking at any span from an angle decreases the visual distance of the span.

 

I wouldn't call missing a 44 yard field goal "luck". And Rizzi really has no reason to come out and sat that. I think he actually believes it.

 

I mean what else would you call it? The average for a kick in the NFL between 40-49 yards is 80%. Thats luck.

 

Those photos look like every other kick attempt (that weren't blocked or close to be being blocked).

 

There is no doubt we got extremely lucky.

 

So, our Field Goal DEFENSE, had nothing at all to do with the outcome, in your opinion? Sorry, but I disagree.

 

Yeah I also think most of that was us getting lucky because Koo kicked it off center, and keep in mind 77.5% success rate (on average) at that distance means you miss almost 1 out of 4 times, so it's no gimme FG. But you can see in this video (from 6:21) that McCain flies in front of the kick just after it's kicked. Looks like he might have been a hair late, but it definitely would have been close had the kick went on-center:

The other thing I was interested in is whether the guy who got his arm up on the DL could have blocked it, but it looks like that wouldn't have happened. Koo had his potential game-winning 44 yarder (same distance) in week 1 blocked by the Broncos, and the guy who blocked that had his arm/hand 5 yards away from where the ball is kicked (from 0:34) while in our case the arm/hand is at best 6 yards away:

As to how much a kicker is influenced by someone trying to block a FG while keeping his head down the whole time (meaning it's all peripheral vision) I have no idea, but even if there's influence I do think most of this was us getting lucky.