The release of Josh Scobee took us all by surprise as the recently injured but former star kicker never even had a shot in training camp or preseason. Now, we know why. The Saints signed Connor Barth after hosting him at rookie mini camp. Barth became available despite a pretty good season in 2015 because the Buccaneers were foolish enough to draft Roberto Aguayo in the 2nd round. Once they made an investment that large, Barth was never coming back. But Barth is a very good kicker in his own right. As I tweeted before, career FG% makes are very comparable between the incumbent “starter” Kai Forbath and Barth:
Connor Barth was 23-28 last year and has a career 84.8% success rate. Forbath is 84.1% career. Should be a pretty good camp battle.
— Saints Nation Blog (@SaintsNationBlg) May 20, 2016
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While you look at that on the surface you’d assume these guys are comparable, but Barth has an arrow pointing up whereas Forbath has struggled a little more lately. Forbath is coming off a season where he went 10-15 between the Redskins and Saints (67%). That has impacted his career make average most negatively. Interesting, because in the midst of those struggles he made a career long 57 yarder (3rd longest kick in Saints history) and a game winning 50+ yarder against the Giants. Barth, on the other hand, has gone 115 for his last 133 (86.5%) over 5 seasons. Admittedly, though, Barth’s worse season during that span was a still solid 23 for 28 in 2015 (82.1%). Barth’s lower career average is a function of a bad season in 2009 (14-19) whereas Forbath’s “worst case” season came in 2015. Both players are accurate career veteran kickers with no recent injury history, unlike Scobee. Now that we know why Scobee was released, it makes sense.
Last year the Saints rolled with two complete unknown wild card kickers in Dustin Hopkins and Zach Hocker. We were all very concerned about how that would play out. Unfortunately, Hopkins turned out to be pretty good and the Saints decided against keeping him based on a small sample size of performance in preseason where Hocker had the edge. This, despite Hopkins clearly outperforming Hocker throughout training camp. It’s well documented Hopkins would go on to cost Forbath his job in Washington, become a solid kicker for the Redskins, and Hocker would fail after six games kicking for the Saints. Forbath, looking for a new job, would replace Hocker. You can’t make this up.
This battle feels a lot more secure, at least in the short term. Based on last year one concern is whether the Saints will make the right call to keep the better kicker. But beyond that, you have to feel better about the camp battle featuring two proven commodities with no recent injury history who have done it at a high level in the NFL for a while now. The security of experience is a luxury that will hopefully benefit the Saints this coming season and it’s certainly not one the Saints had early last year. It cost them.
The Sean Payton kicking carousel since 2006 has been a painful one to watch for the most part. There’s been some short terms successes with Martin Grammatica, Garrett Hartley, John Carney, John Kasay and Shayne Graham. But there’s been way more short and long term disappointments without a promising situation that was stable way into the future. I’m not sure Barth and/or Forbath represent a long term solution, but for now we’ll settle for a good season that produces more than 80% success rate on field goals for an entire season. Last year the Saints were 18 for 26 on field goals and miss two extra points. That’s just not good enough.
Personally, I’m hoping Barth can make the Saints’ decision too easy to ignore. Forbath was 5 for 10 in the Superdome last year and 5 for 5 on the road. The fact that he struggled most at home indoors is troubling. Then, there’s the other guy:
Kicking in a dome, Barth is 23-of-24 on FGs and 22-of-22 on XPs. https://t.co/Nf4LTWCM4S
— Evan Woodbery (@TheSaintsBeat) May 20, 2016
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In the Superdome, Barth has made FGs of 34, 47, 43, 32, 48, 40, 48 and 25. No misses.
— Evan Woodbery (@TheSaintsBeat) May 20, 2016
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We’ll see what happens and I reserve the right to change my mind… but right now? It’s pretty clear who I prefer as my kicker going into 2016 and I’m feeling better about the kicking situation if Barth proves himself in preseason.
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