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One of the big position battles for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this offseason is at kicker. Not a high-impact battle, but a high-profile one nonetheless: last year’s second-round pick Roberto Aguayo struggled mightily as a rookie, so they signed a veteran in Nick Folk to add some competition, and possibly push Aguayo out of a job.
Early on it seemed like that was going to happen, when Folk comfortably won the few kicking sessions reporters were allowed to see. But Dirk Koetter emphasized at the time that the Bucs would be making decisions on the basis of a much larger set of kicks, and that reporters simply did not have the data to know who was doing better.
So far this minicamp, that seems to have been confirmed. Aguayo hit all five of his kicks on Wednesday, while Folk missed one, per JoeBucsFan. And today, both kickers made both of their kicks.
Field goal time
— Scott Reynolds (@PewterReport) June 15, 2017
Aguayo:
44 ✅
52 ✅
Folk:
44 ✅
52 ✅
All of this doesn’t tell us much. As Koetter keeps saying, the Bucs see many more kicks and will not be making decisions just based on the few kicks the media get to see. But we can say one thing: any reports of Aguayo’s demise based on his first few days of kicking were exaggerated.
Now to see how the rest of this competition plays out.