Titans make another odd special teams downgrade with latest kicker news

The Tennessee Titans realized that their league-worst special teams from last season was enough to send them crashing to a 3-14 season, and new executive Mike Borgonzi and special teams coach John Fassel are doing everything they can to get the old guard out of town.

Despite the fact that he set what was once previously believed to be an unbreakable record for yards per punt during his rookie season and managed to do it again the following year, former All-Pro punter Ryan Stonehouse was cut loose in favor of one of Fassel’s old Los Angeles Rams guys in decorated veteran Johnny Hekker.

The kickers room was next on the chopping block, despite the fact that Nick Folk may have been one of the best individual players on the team last year. Folk now has some competition that could end up bringing an end to his time in Nashville.

The Titans have signed kicker Joey Slye, who spent last season with the New England Patriots after brief spells with the Washington Commanders and Carolina Panthers in the past, to a new contract. Slye will first need to prove that he can be better than Folk, which could be a tough hill to climb.

Titans replace kicker Nick Folk with Joey Slye

The median NFL kicker with enough attempts to qualify drilled 85.1 % of their field goals last season. Slye ranked 29th in field goal percentage with a 78.8% mark, which is a continuation of a 2023 season in which he was also below the 80% threshold. Both New England and Washington moved on from him.

Folk, meanwhile, was the most accurate kicker in the league, drilling 21 of 22 field goals last year. While the ageless veteran might turn 41 years old in November, he can still get the job done due to his graceful aging. A side-by-side comparison of the two shows that Folk is clearly the superior player.

The desire to remake Tennessee’s special teams might be going a bit too far. Most of the issues they had last year stemmed from poor kick coverage, not from Folk or Stonehouse being bad at their particular jobs.

Fassel has earned enough respect as a special teams coach to trust if his input influenced these decisions, and Borgonzi is trying his best to work his magic with the roster, but this move may come off as a bit of a head-scratcher in the interim.

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