Colts on Spencer Shrader, Blake Grupe kicker battle: 'Be a difficult one'
· Yahoo Sports
INDIANAPOLIS — The hottest battle of Colts training camp likely won’t come at one of the positions left open by the departure of a long-term starter.
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It will be waged by two players who started for Indianapolis at the same spot last season.
The Colts were able to bring back Blake Grupe in free agency, setting up a winner-take-all battle with a recovering Spencer Shrader for a kicking job that has essentially been up for grabs since age finally caught up with Adam Vinatieri.
The Colts have been through plenty of kicking competitions since Vinatieri retired.
What makes this one different is that Indianapolis believes it has two of the best 32 kickers in the NFL on the roster.
“It's going to be exciting to see how those two guys compete. I think it'll bring the best out of both of them,” Indianapolis special teams coordinator Brian Mason said. “One of them will certainly win the competition, be starting for the Colts, and one of them will be fortunate enough to start for somebody else, but I think they're both going to be starting kickers this year in the NFL.”
A late hit by Raiders safety Tristin McCollum on Shrader’s right knee put everything in motion to get the Colts to this point. Shrader, the promising young kicker who won the job last offseason, suffered a torn ACL and MCL, ending his season and putting the Colts right back on the kicker carousel.
When veteran Michael Badgley faltered, Indianapolis pounced on Grupe after New Orleans released the third-year kicker, believing that the Colts’ operational consistency could fix what was ailing a kicker who’d missed eight field goals for the Saints.
Grupe made every kick down the stretch, including a franchise-record 60-yard bomb to give the Colts a late lead in Seattle.
The way Grupe kicked, it was something of a surprise that another team didn’t recognize the difference in operational consistency and sign Grupe, a free agent, as a potential starter.
“There was definitely interest, and he had options, but no matter where he was going to go, unless you're like one of the top-end kickers in the league, he was going to have to compete somewhere,” Mason said. “Obviously, he felt really comfortable with his opportunity to compete here based off how the season ended for him, and we're really happy that he decided to come back.”
When Grupe signed, Shrader’s injury still left uncertainty about how he’d recover.
A torn ACL in the kicking leg is a rare injury for the position — by being in motion, the kicking leg isn’t often planted when a player takes a hit — and it was unclear how he’d respond.
Two months later, the Colts are getting glowing reports.
“All signs are that he’s ahead of schedule,” Mason said. “He’s not with us at practice with him being on the Injured Reserve list, but he has been kicking. He started off kicking deflated footballs. Now he's kicking full PSI footballs. And from all indications that I'm hearing, he looks like he's not even injured as far as when he's kicking. He's got really good juice on his kicks, good pop on the ball.”
Leg strength is often what separates kickers at the NFL level in an age when the position is more accurate than ever. The league average for field goal percentage was .856 last season, and 11 kickers made at least seven field goals of 50 yards or longer.
“Usually when you're talking leg talent, you're talking about the height at the line of scrimmage, so how much height and trajectory do they get on the kick?” Mason said. “And then, who has an ability to make more from 50-plus and 60-plus?”
The answer to the second question is not easy.
Grupe was one of the 11 kickers who made at least seven field goals from 50 yards or longer, and even though Shrader is only 1 of 2 in his short career from distance, he actually profiles as the player with a little bit stronger leg.
“They have different mechanics,” Mason said. “Grupe is a jab and two-step guy, where Spencer’s a two-step guy. Spencer is a little bit bigger and more powerful of a leg, being he’s a slightly more statured guy, but Grupe has more experience.”
Mason is typically looking for two things in a kicker battle.
Leg strength and mental makeup.
But he coached Shrader and Grupe at the college level in addition to their time with the Colts, so Mason knows his two kickers are made of the right stuff, and he knows they have the leg strength.
How he decides between them will come down to who makes more kicks in camp. Grupe and Shrader will likely kick three times a week in training camp, and kicks in scrimmages or preseason games will be weighted more heavily than practice kicks.
Who makes more kicks is the easiest way to determine a winner. If the numbers are close, though, the next level is weighing kicks that are down the middle versus kicks on the edges of the uprights, and if that’s all square, Mason will have to make a decision based on upside and talent alone.
Shrader made it easy last year, soundly beating out Maddux Trujillo for the job.
Mason isn’t expecting this competition to be the same way.
“Sometimes it's easy, and one guy's kicking considerably better and more consistent than the other,” Mason said. “I think in this situation with two talented kickers, it'll probably be a difficult one, and it'll be exciting to kind of play all the way out through training camp.”
Joel A. Erickson and Nathan Brown cover the Colts all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Colts Insider newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Spencer Shrader, Blake Grupe both NFL kickers, only one will be with Colts