The Rams Have Lost 89 Pounds at Kicker

The Los Angeles Rams have identified a problem with their kicking game and responded by removing 89 pounds of kicker.

On Monday night, Harrison Mevis, a 245-pound man affectionately known as the Thiccer Kicker, missed a 50-yard field goal against Buffalo and had a potential game-winner blocked in overtime. The Rams lost 37–34. By Tuesday afternoon, Mevis was unemployed.

His replacement is Blake Grupe, a 5-foot-7, 156-pound specialist whom the Rams acquired from the New York Jets' practice squad.

Mevis weighs approximately as much as one and a half Blake Grupes. The transaction represents a 36 percent reduction in the mass of the man responsible for kicking field goals.

It is difficult to imagine another professional sports organization changing the physical dimensions of a single position so dramatically in the space of one afternoon.

The NFL has occasionally experimented with extreme kicker geometry.

In 2017, the Oakland Raiders replaced Sebastian Janikowski, a 260-pound Polish-American kicking institution, with Giorgio Tavecchio, who weighed 180 pounds. That transaction eliminated 80 pounds of placekicker from the Raiders' roster.

The Rams have now exceeded that differential by nine pounds.

The distinction is especially remarkable because professional kickers tend to exist within a fairly recognizable range of human dimensions. There are tall ones and short ones, thicker ones and thinner ones, but very few who would be mistaken for the man responsible for collecting debts at a nightclub.

Mevis was one of those exceptions.

At six feet and 245 pounds, he possessed the approximate dimensions of a professional linebacker, though his responsibilities generally involved standing at a considerable distance from physical contact.

Grupe, by contrast, measures 5-foot-7 and 156 pounds. There are high school soccer players with comparable measurements. There are also NFL wide receivers who outweigh him by seventy pounds, and defensive linemen who weigh more than two Blake Grupes.

Both men have spent years training to perform precisely the same job.

The Rams have now decided that the job previously occupied by the larger man can be adequately performed by someone with 64 percent of his body mass.

Consider the implications for the equipment department.

A locker formerly allocated to Mevis must now accommodate Grupe, a man who could conceivably occupy the space while leaving enough room for an additional Grupe. The Rams could probably make two Blake Grupe jerseys out of one Harrison Mevis jersey.

The kicking operation itself remains structurally unchanged. The ball is still the same size. The uprights have not been lowered. The field remains 100 yards long.

Only the quantity of man approaching the football has changed.

There is also something wonderful about the timing.

Mevis's final attempted field goal was blocked by Gregory Rousseau, a 6-foot-6, 266-pound defensive end who broke through Los Angeles's protection in overtime.

A very large man prevented another very large man from kicking a football.

The Rams responded by hiring a considerably smaller man.

Presumably, the hope is that the next time Rousseau comes charging through the line, there will be less kicker available to obstruct.

None of this is to suggest Grupe is incapable of performing the job. He has made field goals from 60 yards and has demonstrated that kicking a football does not require occupying an enormous amount of space.

But it does invite a question about precisely what the Rams were purchasing when they hired his predecessor.

Mevis brought an unmistakable physical presence to the position. He was the rare kicker whose appearance suggested that, should the football become unavailable, he might be capable of moving the goalposts himself.

Grupe offers an entirely different proposition. He can stand behind Mevis and disappear almost completely. A reasonably ambitious Mevis could wear Grupe like a backpack.

And yet, on Sunday, Los Angeles will send its new kicker onto the same field, toward the same football, with the same expectation that the ball will travel between the same two posts.

The Rams have not yet demonstrated that they have solved their kicking problem.

They have, however, made it 89 pounds lighter.