Placekicker

In gridiron football, the placekicker (PK), more commonly known as kicker (K), is the player responsible for attempts at scoring field goals and extra points. In most cases, the placekicker also serves as the team's kickoff specialist. The term derives from the attempted scorer kicking the ball "from placement" of a teammate holding the ball rather than by individually drop-kicking the ball through the goal posts.

The kicker initially was not a specialized role. Before the 1934 standardization of the prolate spheroid shape of the ball, drop kicking was the prevalent method of kicking field goals and conversions, but even after its replacement by place kicking, until the 1960s the kicker almost always doubled at another position on the roster. George Blanda, Lou Groza, Frank Gifford and Paul Hornung are prominent examples of players who were stars at other positions as well as being known for their kicking abilities. When the one-platoon system was abolished in the 1940s, the era of "two-way" players gave way to increased specialization, teams would employ a specialist at the punter or kicker position. Ben Agajanian, who started his professional career in 1945, was the first confirmed place-kicking specialist in the NFL, kicking for ten teams. However, there is some evidence that Ken Strong and Phil Martinovich, both in 1939, and Mose Kelsch, in 1933 and 1934, may have preceded Agajanian as players who spent their seasons doing nothing but kicking.

Because of the difference in techniques needed, to avoid leg fatigue, and to reduce the risk of injury, on the professional level most teams employ separate players to handle the jobs. The placekicker usually will only punt when the punter is injured, and vice versa (one player often handles both jobs in the Canadian Football League, which has smaller active rosters than in the NFL). A professional team will occasionally even have a kickoff specialist who handles only the kickoffs and serves as a backup to the kicker who handles field goals and extra points. This is typically done to further protect a premier point-scoring kicker from injury or if he, while accurate, does not have sufficient distance on kickoffs.

Amateur teams (e.g., college or high school) often do not differentiate between placekickers and punters, have different players assume different placekicking duties (for example, one person handles kicking off, another kicks long field goals, and another kicks from shorter distances), or have regular position players handle kicking duties. The last option is quite common on high school teams, when the best athletes are often the best kickers. Before the modern era of pro football, this was also the case for professional teams, particularly when most placekicks were still made in the "straight on" style outlined below.

Although kickers are protected from direct physical contact on field goal attempts, this is not generally true on kickoffs, and a kicker can see significant contact during a kick return. Kicker Björn Nittmo notably suffered severe brain damage from a hit he sustained on a kickoff in 1997.

Still, due to their lack of plays in games and lack of contact compared to other positions, the top kickers in the NFL have often had extremely long careers, far beyond that of a typical NFL player. Of the eight players in NFL history who have played beyond the age of 45, six of them are kickers: Morten Andersen, Gary Anderson, John Carney, Ben Agajanian, Adam Vinatieri, and George Blanda (Blanda was the oldest player in NFL history, playing until the age of 48).

It is not uncommon for placekickers to be some of the smallest members of their team. However, The New York Times in 2011 wrote that NFL kickers had adopted year-round weight training and strict diets. Sebastian Janikowski that year was a 6-foot-2-inch (1.88 m) and 250-pound (110 kg) kicker. Kicker Rob Bironas, who was 6 feet (1.8 m) and 205 pounds (93 kg), noted, "I might be bigger than some wide receivers and cornerbacks."

The presence of foreign born-and-raised players in the highest levels of gridiron football has largely been limited to placekickers, and more recently to punters from Australia as well. Occasionally, these players come from outside the traditional American high school or college football systems—and most of the women to have played men's American football at the college level were placekickers. Notably Tom Landry recruited several soccer players from Latin America, such as Efren Herrera and Raphael Septien, to compete for the job of placekicker for the Dallas Cowboys. Cypriot Garo Yepremian was renowned as much for his kicking proficiency as he was for his complete lack of awareness of the sport early in his career. British-born kicker Mick Luckhurst was one of the first British players in the NFL to have a long career, playing 7 seasons for the Atlanta Falcons during the 1980s and retiring as Atlanta's all-time leading scorer. Mexican kicker Raul Allegre played 9 seasons in the NFL and won a Super Bowl in 1986. Austrian kicker Toni Fritsch played 12 seasons in the NFL and won a Super Bowl in 1972, becoming the only player in NFL history to have won a Super Bowl along with a top-flight association football title. These anecdotes increase the perception of the placekicker as an outsider.