{"id":762521,"date":"2026-02-19T14:15:27","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/762521\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T14:15:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:15:27","slug":"there-arent-many-kicking-coaches-in-the-nfl-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/762521\/","title":{"rendered":"There aren\u2019t many kicking coaches in the NFL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shoutout to LLCHESTY<\/a>, who asked an interesting question in the comment section of a previous article covering some potential special teams coordinator candidates to replace Rich Bisaccia, now that he\u2019s left his post with the Green Bay Packers<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Hey Justis, do you know if any teams use a kicking coach? With the expansion of coaching staffs it\u2019s kind of surprising they all don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Well, let\u2019s try to answer that today.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post already tackled this subject<\/a> in an article that they wrote in 2024, which included this from then-former long-time special teams coach Kevin O\u2019Dea, who spent north of two decades in the league before resurfacing as the New York Jets\u2019 assistant special teams coach in 2025:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you think about it, those were like $40 [million] to $50 million kicks,\u201d said O\u2019Dea, who last coached in the NFL in 2018. He was factoring in all of those coaching salaries but probably underselling the bump in revenue and future ticket sales from an unexpected playoff appearance. \u201cSome of these staffs have 30 coaches now, and we\u2019ve got two or three linebackers coaches and two quarterbacks coaches, but there aren\u2019t many true kicking coaches in the league. How many games come down to a 42-yard field goal? But when you ask people if they are interested in hiring a kicking consultant, it always comes down to the cha-ching. No one wants to spend for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Dea might know what he\u2019s talking about, as the Jets led the NFL in special teams DVOA last season<\/a>, in what was really just a two-team race between them and the Seattle Seahawks.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve stated previously here at APC, few coaches in the league really want to reinvent a kicker from the ground up. They\u2019ll give notes on strike points (basically what amounts to a \u201cyou missed that one\u201d as far as feedback goes) and trajectory (\u201cthat one could have been blocked\u201d), but there aren\u2019t many true specialist coaches in the league as much as there are guys with stopwatches. Because of that, it\u2019s common for kickers to have their own kicking coaches (which they pay for), and they receive feedback from them weekly.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what the Washington Post had to say about this phenomenon:<\/p>\n

Some special teams coordinators feel threatened by their presence, believing they should be the expert on kicking even if their background is more on coverages and X\u2019s and O\u2019s. And some kickers themselves can be skeptical of outside voices; they work in the offseason with their personal gurus, in some cases since middle school. Problem is, those gurus aren\u2019t on the sideline to help them in real time on game day.<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s time to answer the question: How few of these kicking specialists are there around the league?<\/p>\n

I tried my best to find the playing backgrounds of everyone involved with NFL special teams, at a coaching level, for the 2025 season. I was able to find all but a couple, so this data is pretty sturdy. The vast majority of people working in the kicking game in the pros were either linebackers, edge defenders, tight ends, defensive backs or receivers. Those are the non-kicking battery positions that play the most on special teams.<\/p>\n

For example, here\u2019s how the Packers\u2019 special teams snaps<\/a> broke down by position in 2025:<\/p>\n

Defensive back: 1,098 snapsOff-ball linebacker: 946Edge defender: 537Offensive line: 521 (almost exclusively on field goal protection)Receiver: 332 (I\u2019m including Bo Melton as a receiver, sue me)Interior defensive linemen: 328Running backs: 259Tight ends: 171Kicker: 162Punter: 126Long snapper: 126<\/p>\n

These numbers generally hold up across the league, but it is worth noting that Green Bay uses its offensive players a whole lot less than other teams in the NFL. For example, the Seahawks had a fullback named Brady Russell who played 396 snaps for the team, damn near as many as the Packers\u2019 running back and tight end rooms combined (430) in 2025. You\u2019re gonna be shocked, but the offensive head coach doesn\u2019t want to use his players much in the kicking game, outside of Melton (who was listed as a cornerback this year). While Savion Williams returned kicks, he played the 31st-most snaps on special teams for Green Bay in 2025. Romeo Doubs, who settled in as a punt returner for the team, was ranked 37th. Gameday rosters are limited to just 48 players, for perspective.<\/p>\n

As far as I could tell, there are only four coaches who have a kicker, punter or long snapper background in the entire special teams coaching apparatus in the NFL, fewer than the combined number of offensive linemen (who now only play on field goal protection after the dynamic kickoff eliminated their need to play on kickoff return) and quarterbacks (who don\u2019t play special teams now that punters are holders in the kicking game) in similar positions.<\/p>\n

Those four coaches are Darrin Simmons, Randy Brown, Randy\u2019s son Tyler Brown and Chris Gould.<\/p>\n

Simmons is the assistant head coach and special teams coordinator of the Cincinnati Bengals, a position he\u2019s held since 2020. He has been the Bengals\u2019 special teams coordinator since 2003 and was a punter at the college level, earning junior college All-American and All-Big Eight honors.<\/p>\n

Randy Brown is a former college kicker who currently has the title of senior special teams coach with the Baltimore Ravens and got his start there in 2008 as a \u201ckicking consultant.\u201d He joined Baltimore from Philadelphia, where his time overlapped with special teams coordinator John Harbaugh, who was hired to be the Ravens\u2019 head coach in 2008. Brown apparently didn\u2019t follow Harbaugh to New York, based on the Giants\u2019 full staff announcement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Randy\u2019s son, Tyler, was a punter in college and got his first crack in the NFL in 2021 as a quality control coach of his father\u2019s former team, the Eagles. He\u2019s been serving as a special teams assistant for the team since 2023.<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, both Browns have done kicker consulting work in the past, outside of the structure of college or NFL staffs.<\/p>\n

Gould coaches for John Harbaugh\u2019s brother, Jim, with the Los Angeles Chargers, as their assistant special teams coach. For what it\u2019s worth, the Harbaughs are a part of three of these four coaches\u2019 journeys, as Tyler Brown also was on Jim\u2019s staff at the University of Michigan.<\/p>\n

Gould is the brother of 2006 first-team All-Pro kicker Robbie Gould, and Chris kicked for the University of Virginia. After three years of arena football, Chris decided to get into the coaching world. Gould\u2019s career actually overlapped with Green Bay kicker Brandon McManus when they were together in Denver from 2015 to 2021. Chris was first hired to be a coaching assistant in 2015 before being promoted to assistant special teams coach in 2017. His contract expired after the 2021 season, and he left for Los Angeles that offseason.<\/p>\n

This is all to say that there aren\u2019t many place-kicking or punting specialists in the league. Four guys in the NFL have a background in that, and three have come from the Harbaugh tree, the only one that seems to care about the subject matter. On the coordinator level, there\u2019s just one guy, Darrin Simmons, who has not been available on the market since the Bengals hired him to be special teams coordinator in 2003. We\u2019re still waiting on a long snapper to break the coaching barrier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shoutout to LLCHESTY, who asked an interesting question in the comment section of a previous article covering some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2072],"tags":[1227,7,41,345,52919,97481,2702,2514,2513,6,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-762521","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-bay-packers","8":"tag-around-the-nfl","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-green-bay","11":"tag-green-bay-packers","12":"tag-green-bay-packers-analysis","13":"tag-green-bay-packers-coaching-staff","14":"tag-green-bay-packers-news","15":"tag-greenbay","16":"tag-greenbaypackers","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-packers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116097720422136524","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}