Graham Gano plays virtual golf on his phone while he sits in the locker room after practice. As I approach him to ask about his league-leading 96% field goal percentage and 83.6% kickoff touchback rate, he tells me he’d be glad to chat with me, but has to wait for his opponent to take their shot on the seventeenth hole.
“I’m leading, and if he misses this one, I win. A lot of virtual coins riding on this one.”
Thus is the life of a kicker. A lot riding on every shot; every field goal attempt or kickoff a chance to be the hero or villain for an entire fanbase. And while Gano knows that when he gets his opportunity, he can’t afford to have a misstep. Even though he’s having his best year percentage-wise thus far in 2017, all it takes is one bad game to make the fans and coaches forget every made field goal this season and call for the kicker’s head.
“I felt like last season, going into the last game, I was on pace to have my best season as a pro,” says Gano. “It’s kind of funny, just having that one bad game at the end of the year kind of flips the narrative a little bit.”
The last game of the season has been a struggle for Gano the past two seasons, whether it’s missing a 44-yard field goal in Super Bowl 50 or missing three of four last season as the Panthers wrapped a disappointing season in Tampa Bay; even though those endings may have left a bad taste in his mouth, this season has Gano as one of the best kickers in the league. Even his missteps have silver linings; the ability to move past a missed kick is the hallmark of a quality kicker. Gano has missed two extra points this season; in those games he is 5-for-5 on field goal attempts, including his signature kick of the season.
“The New England game,” punter and holder Michael Palardy explained about Gano’s 48-yard field goal as time expired in Foxboro. “Graham misses the extra point, but he nails the game winner; nobody talks about the extra point, they only talk about the game winner. The thing is, you’re only as good as your last kick. So the confidence that you have in yourself is really what propels you to the next level.”
While the field goal percentage (96%) is the statistic that will draw the most attention, perhaps the most important is the kicker’s ability to be a field position weapon every time the Panthers score points; opponents have only been able to return 12 of Gano’s 68 kickoffs this season, his 83.6% touchback rate is the highest in the NFL. Since he became the Panthers full-time kicker in 2012, he has 332 touchbacks, the most in the NFL and the second-highest percentage wise; Gano began the season with 15 consecutive touchbacks, the longest streak to begin a season since at least 1970. The previous record holder with 14 in a row?
Gano.
“We’ve got to have Graham’s back, because he has our back. Week in and week out. If there’s a circumstance where he can’t bang it out of the endzone, then we’ve got to go cover. There can’t be any drop off. With him, there hardly ever is.”
-Ben Jacobs
Special teams relies on everything going right, and Gano thinks that the relationship between himself, holder Michael Palardy and snapper J.J. Jansen is clicking on all cylinders at the moment; when it had been windy at practice that day, he wanted to tell Palardy that he wanted the ball to lean a certain way on the hold.
“He said, ‘You don’t even have to say anything,'” said Gano about his holder. “He knew exactly what I was looking for; that was pretty neat. It’s comforting for me to know that we don’t even have to say anything and he already knows what I’m looking for as far as the holds concerned. It helps out a lot and it definitely builds confidence.”
“We all have this camaraderie between the three of us that is infectious,” explained Palardy. “My relationship with J.J. is not separate from my relationship with Graham; it’s a relationship that we all have with each other. When J.J.’s thinking something, I know what he’s thinking, I know what he’s about to say to me because I know the standards that he holds himself to.”
“I think the combination of both of those things really helps him, as a field goal kicker, only have to sit back there and worry about his job. When your field goal kicker only has to worry about his job, that’s a good sign.”
Gano has had to worry about his job in a different sense this season, first in the preseason when Harrison Butker was drafted in the seventh round from Georgia Tech to provide the veteran with some training camp competition and then when the Panthers signed Roberto Aguayo to the practice squad earlier this season. While the coaches called Aguayo an insurance policy in case Gano’s knee flared up, Gano viewed it as competition.
Not that that is a bad thing.
“I feel like I’ve just continued to improve; definitely having Harrison [Butker] here, to compete against him in the preseason and offseason, was definitely good. I feel like competition’s good for everybody.”
“It’s natural to want to compete, I’m always looking for competition. It’s fun, it’s exciting to have somebody to compete against.”
“I’ve got a lot of confidence in him, I really do. he’s kicking the ball really well.”
-Ron Rivera
Both kickers that began the season in a Panthers uniform have been excellent this season, and Gano says he exchanges texts with Butker on a weekly basis. Butker, who has made 93.3% of his field goal attempts for the Kansas City Chiefs, is one of the best kickers in the AFC, and Gano thinks that the rookie deserves a Pro Bowl nod in his first season in the league.
“I think he deserves to be in the Pro Bowl this year. His stats speak for themselves, he’s had a fantastic year,” Gano said. Does the Panther think he should represent the NFC?
“If I deserve to be there, I’ll be there. Whoever gets it is going to be very deserving, so I’ll be happy either way.”
One more competition yet to win. Oh, and Gano won his golf game.
It’s been that kind of season.
