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About the Author: Scott Reynolds

Avatar Of Scott Reynolds
Scott Reynolds is in his 28th year of covering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as the vice president, publisher and senior Bucs beat writer for PewterReport.com. Author of the popular SR's Fab 5 column on Fridays, Reynolds oversees web development and forges marketing partnerships for PewterReport.com in addition to his editorial duties. A graduate of Kansas State University in 1995, Reynolds spent six years giving back to the community as the defensive coordinator/defensive line coach for his sons' Pop Warner team, the South Pasco Predators. Reynolds can be reached at: [email protected]

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SR’s Fab 5 is a collection of inside scoop, analysis and insight from yours truly, PewterReport.com publisher and Bucs beat writer Scott Reynolds. Here are a few things that caught my attention this week at One Buc Place and around the NFL.

FAB 1. AGUAYO’S ROOKIE SEASON NOT AS BAD AS YOU MIGHT THINK
If Mike Evans had caught 22 passes out of the first 32 that had been thrown his way during his rookie season in 2014 you wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

If Jameis Winston had connected on 22 of his first 32 passes last year during his rookie campaign you wouldn’t have cringed at those numbers.

But when Tampa Bay rookie kicker Roberto Aguayo nails 22 of his first 31 field goals you cringe. And you sigh. And you shake your head.

Such as life in the NFL where perfection is expected – demanded, really – for kickers.

“It’s the ultimate pass-fail position in sports,” Aguayo said. “You only get a few opportunities each game, so there’s not much room for error.”

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Bucs K Roberto Aguayo – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Evans wound up catching 68 of the 124 passes that wound up coming his way as a rookie, although not all of them were catchable. Aguayo could only hope he’ll get 124 opportunities in Tampa Bay.

Winston wound up completing 312 passes out of his 535 attempts as a rookie. Aguayo could only dream of getting the chance to make 312 kicks as a Buccaneer.

Catching half the passes thrown your way when you’re the primary target on offense is reasonable. Completing 60 percent of your passes in the NFL is desirable.

Making 71 percent of your field goals is disastrous in the NFL – even for a rookie. And yet was Aguayo’s rookie season in Tampa Bay actually a disaster?

We’ll answer that question in a few minutes. First let’s provide some perspective on what transpired during Aguayo’s rookie season, which certainly had it’s share of ups and downs.

The former Florida State kicker definitely sees progress after going through a slump in training camp and the early part of the preseason before connecting on all of his kicks against Cleveland and Washington. After making a 43-yard field goal, which would be his longest of the year, against Atlanta in Week 1, in addition to his first four extra points of the regular season, Aguayo missed a field goal at Arizona and then another one and his first extra point miss against Los Angeles in 37-32 loss in Week 3.

“Definitely, I think it’s pretty obvious, I look at my first four games and how that went about and then these last 10 games and how I’ve progressed,” Aguayo said. “Fixing on what I had to do and just relaxing and getting comfortable out there, at the end of the day, it’s just a game and I’m going out there and kicking like I would on any other field. Sometimes you just can’t overthink things and you’ve just got to stay back and relax and trust what you’re capable of doing. That’s how I’ve taken it and work on a few details, not just on the field but any other area that would help me be 100 percent. Whether it be getting more sleep or eating right. Being in the NFL, those are the kind of thing do, the little extra to ease your mind and to be at 100 percent.”

Aguayo focused on the little things to help regain the focus that made him one of the best kickers in NCAA history.

Bucs Gm Jason Licht Traded Up To Get Fsu Kicker Roberto Aguayo In The Second Round - Photo By: Florida State

K Roberto Aguayo – Photo by: Getty Images

“Eating better and getting more sleep,” Aguayo said. “In college you kind of could get away with it and you could just trust your talent. Here, I’ve been kicking since last season and I haven’t had a break with the stress of the season. You kind of don’t know how everything is working, but as the season went on, I got more comfortable and it let me relax on the field.

Make no mistake. Despite the assurances of Bucs general manager Jason Licht, who said that Aguayo was wired differently and that he liked the mental make-up of the kicker he traded up to get in the second round – and took a huge amount of criticism for in the media – Aguayo felt a tremendous amount of pressure due to his draft status.

“Coming into this season there was a lot on my plate with expectations as a second-round pick,” Aguayo said. “You try not to focus on that and do your thing, but with everything being talked about and being pushed … it’s kind of like the white elephant in the room. You embrace it. I try to embrace it and you do your best to get through it. Being a kicker, a lot of people would have caved. Yeah, I started [out] rough and I tried to find myself. I would go to sleep and I was like, ‘What’s going on? What can I do to get better?’ You try to think of all these things, when really it’s [about] just sitting down and relaxing.”

I believe if Aguayo had been drafted in the fourth or fifth round – and he might not have been available then – that he would have had a better year due to less pressure and less lofty expectations. There have been plenty of articles written on the struggles of some of former Patriots kickers Adam Vinatieri (77.1 percent) and Stephen Gostkowski (76.9 percent) during their rookie seasons – and other notable kickers – and how they rebounded to improve their field goal percentage by over 10 points throughout their respective careers.

Aguayo made just 71 percent of his kicks. A 10-percent improvement gets him to 81 percent, which is still not ideal, but within the range of Connor Barth, who connected on 82.1 percent of his field goals in 2015 before losing his job to Aguayo on draft day last year. More will be expected of Aguayo in 2017 – right from the start of OTAs in May.

Bucs head coach Dirk Koetter put Aguayo on notice at his year-end press conference on Monday, and rightly so.

“As far as the investment in Roberto and where we picked him, we were all on board with that,” Koetter said. “That’s not going to change. We’re never going to bring that back. That happened, and Roberto was our kicker and like any other player, if he’s got that Buc jersey on and he’s out there on game day, I’m 100 percent in. With that said, our field-goal percentage this year was not good enough. That’s not the only stat that’s not good enough.”

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Bucs K Roberto Aguayo – Photo by: Getty Images

Aguayo was only 4-of-11 (36.3 percent) from beyond 40 yards last year. As Greg Auman of the Tampa Bay Times pointed out this week, Aguayo became the first NFL kicker since 2010 to go an entire season without making a field goal from at least 45 yards. The last time that happened in Tampa Bay was back in 1980 when Garo Yepremian made a 43-yarder.

“I think it’s already proven that we have no problem moving on from a draft choice and playing somebody that wasn’t drafted,” Koetter said, likely alluding to cutting tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins, a second-round pick in 2014, in favor of undrafted free agent tight end Cameron Brate. “We’ve got to have competition at every position. Nothing’s a given. If they’re not the best player, then I feel pretty certain in saying they won’t be out there.”

Aguayo’s competition arrived on Thursday with the addition of John Lunsford, who was signed to a futures contract for the upcoming season. Whether Lunsford will be Aguayo’s main competition in training camp or whether it will be another kicker instead remains to be seen. Lunsford is a long distance kicker, connecting on 12 kicks from 50 yards or beyond. The former Liberty kicker struggled mightily though between the 40-49, hitting just 8-of-23 field goals from that range with eight blocked kicks.

Lunsford may or may not be a threat to Aguayo, but unheralded Pat Murray was able to rise up in training camp in 2014 and steal the job away from Barth unexpectedly, so you never know.

Aguayo knew there would be competition for his job in 2017, and he actually welcomes it and sees it as an opportunity for him to improve. After spending four years at Florida State surrounded by other kickers, Aguayo experienced a good deal of loneliness during his rookie season, and that caught him off guard.

“I have all these [teammates] but they don’t do what I do,” Aguayo said. “In college you had walk-ons, and they’d go out there and kick and you’d have daily competitions. That is different. In college you have your walk-ons. Sometimes you’re swinging and you can’t really see at the moment. Yeah, you can watch film, but sometimes I go out and watch the other kickers like Dan Bailey or some of these other guys that I’m playing against and I’m watching them in pre-game like, ‘Wow, he’s got a good swing,’ and he does this different, so you kind of pick these tendencies up. When you see a person swing their leg, you kind of pick up what they do and try to see if it can help you in any way and see if it’ll fit. I think it’s different not having any other kickers [on the roster], but you kind of have to go with it. I just watch my own film and just go with it.”

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Bucs K Roberto Aguayo – Photo by: Getty Images

The old football saying is that kicking is 90 percent mental and 10 percent ability. After a turbulent rookie season, Aguayo swears he has the mental makeup to survive and ultimately thrive in the NFL.

“Yeah, I think that’s what this position is made for – mental toughness,” Aguayo said. “I think I’m made for it. You can be at the bottom of the bottom, or the top of the top. In college, being the top of the top, I was like, ‘This is easy.’ But then you go out there and you miss a couple and you don’t know what’s going on. Sometimes you only have one opportunity and then you’re like, I’ve failed at my job. You kind of go on a week-to-week basis, you can be a hero or miss a couple and be a zero.”

Aguayo certainly experienced that this season going from a zero to a hero with a stretch in which he connected on 18-of-21 field goals (85.7 percent) since hitting the game-winner against Carolina in Week 5 through Week 16 at New Orleans. And then Aguayo went back to being a zero in the eyes of some fans with a rough ending to his rookie campaign with a missed field goal and his first blocked field goal against Carolina.

I remember being in the press box and forecasting both of Aguayo’s misses on Sunday against the Panthers. Aguayo prefers to have the ball on the right hash mark. If you look at all of his extra point attempts when the kicker gets to place the ball where he wants it between the hashes, Aguayo places the ball right on the right hash mark because he has a natural slice to the left. Sure enough, Aguayo had to kick from the left hash mark and his 46-yard field goal attempt was wide left.

After long snapper Andrew DePaola was lost in the fourth quarter to a torn ACL while covering a punt, linebacker Adarius Glanton was brought into the game as the backup long-snapper for Aguayo’s 43-yard field goal attempt late in the game. That was certainly a factor in Aguayo’s block, especially after a false start backed the kick attempt up to 48 yards.

“Yes, seeing DePo go down, it does get into your head with our main guy going down,” Aguayo said. “We practice with A.G. after practice, but we never do any live snaps. We were snapping on the sidelines before he went in, and Bryan told me to leave a little later to give him that time if it was a bad snap. But A.G. is not a ‘look snapper,’ so when he picked up his head to look at [holder] Bryan [Anger], Akeem [Spence] thought he was going and that’s what caused the false start. Those little things do put change on you, and in the way of the blocking – I know A.G. was just trying to get the snap back there. I wish I would have had DePo there, but that’s the game. Stuff is going to happen.”

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Bucs LS Andrew DePaola – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

The blocking up front was off with the timing of the snap, and Aguayo’s kick was blocked as a result. That would have been a horrible way for Aguayo’s season to end had that been his final kick of his rookie year.

“When you go out there and mess up on a kick or field goal, then you go and sit down and you’re just thinking about it,” Aguayo said. “You can’t wait to get back out there and have another shot, but you might not get one the rest of the game. It’s one of the most unique positions in the game – in sports – because you may only get one or two opportunities a game.”

And every kick is pass-fail.

“I still want those [missed field goals] back, any kicker would want those back,” Aguayo said. “But now it’s just getting in the process correctly and hitting the ball flush. At the end of the day if it doesn’t go through you know you hit a good ball. It was a good ball just didn’t go through. But that’s what we work on, to get every ball in those uprights. But if it’s a good miss, if you can blame it on the mercy of the wind, then you can walk off confident. The ones where you missed your line, those are the ones that sting more.

“Some kicks early on, I wish I could have back. You wish you could have all the misses back. It’s just a learning experience. You can never say you’re the best unless you can go 100 percent your whole career. There are always ways you can get better and I’m definitely looking for those in the offseason and coming back stronger and ready to help this team win.”

So was Aguayo’s rookie season a disaster? No, it actually wasn’t.

He had eight games where he was completely perfect with his field goal and extra point attempts. The Bucs wound up losing four of those games, so Aguayo never factored into those losses because of his perfection.

Aguayo had a missed extra point against Oakland, but made his other extra point and hit his lone field goal against the Raiders. But because the Bucs made a two-point conversion after his missed PAT, Aguayo didn’t cost Tampa Bay the game against Oakland.

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Bucs K Roberto Aguayo – Photo by: Getty Images

Aguayo missed a combined seven field goals against Carolina (both games), San Francisco, Seattle and San Diego – but the Bucs prevailed in all of those games. The one true game where Aguayo really hurt Tampa Bay was in the Week 3 five-point loss against Los Angeles, but there were plenty of other Bucs to blame for that defeat.

If DePaola doesn’t get hurt I think there is a better chance that he makes that 48-yard field goal in the fourth quarter against Carolina. That blocked field goal cost him two percentage points and he would have finished the season connecting on 73.3 percent of his field goals. Still not good enough, but better statistically.

But Aguayo did make his final kick of the year – an extra point after Evans’ game-winning touchdown – even with the backup long snapper. And as we saw around the NFL this year – even in Tampa Bay – extra points are no longer automatic kicks anymore.

“At the end of the game that extra point was big time – it was huge,” Aguayo said. “We got it off and we got it through. We did enough to win the game. An extra point is not a gimme. It’s a 33-yard field goal. I had a 33-yard field goal with the first field goal in the game. I thought about it, ‘This is an extra point.’ It’s 33 yards and it’s not a chip shot anymore. It’s a good ending. It’s good to end on a make and building onto that during the offseason for next season.”

Aguayo had some memorable moments during his turbulent rookie season, too.

“I think it was good for me to go through all that, to find myself, to see all that, and learn how to get myself out of it for the future,” Aguayo said. “It’s part of a growing experience and maturing at the same time. The beginning of the season was kind of the lows and I think after the Carolina game is where I started getting more comfortable. The ultimate high you could say was the Kansas City game, going 4-for-4 and winning that game by two points, and winning the NFC Special Teams Player of the Week, and having that accolade. It’s hard to get that. That was a high.”

As was his game-winning kick on Monday Night Football against Carolina after two previous misses.

“That was exciting,” Aguayo said. “Obviously it’s awesome that I could hit the game-winner, but obviously disappointed in two misses I had early and that had to do with the game-winner. So that kind of muffled the game-winner, but at the end of the day I saw the Seattle-Arizona game where the Cardinals had two chances to win, and if I missed that one then there would’ve been no game-winner. So that definitely helped my confidence. I guess you can say from there it’s definitely sparked something from there.”

From that game-winner in Week 5 through the end of the season – even the two misses against Carolina in the season finale – Aguayo hit 79.2 percent of his field goals and hit 24-of-25 (96 percent) on his extra points. Not great, but not the disaster that you might have thought his season was.

There’s plenty of room for Aguayo to improve as he heads into his second season. He needs to be more reliable from beyond 40 yards, and he needs to become just as comfortable kicking from the left hash as he is the right hash.

But Aguayo has become more mentally tough as a result of a rocky rookie season, and that’s a positive sign heading into his second year, which will be just as pressure-packed if not more.

Bucs K Roberto Aguayo – Photo By: Getty Images

Bucs K Roberto Aguayo – Photo by: Getty Images

“I finished strong during the middle and the end of the year, learning a lot along the way,” Aguayo said. “Having a good camaraderie with the team, I think that’s good to have when you’re a rookie. All of us rookies learning the same way and understanding that there is going to be mistakes made and there is going to be highs and lows and to keep fighting through it.

“I’m looking forward to this offseason and learning how to have my first offseason [as a pro] and looking forward to next season and getting better.”

Through it all, Aguayo has had a familiar former Seminoles teammate in his corner.

“I just believe he’s always had it,” Winston said. “All of his struggles – if that’s what you want to call it – have been mental. He just needed to get used to everything at this level, and he’s been doing great ever since he’s gotten used to it. I think he’s going to have a great career here.”

That’s strictly up to Aguayo. He’ll be given every opportunity to show improvement and deliver on the promise of being a second-round pick in 2016. But if he falters in the preseason he’ll likely get cut after just one season in Tampa Bay.

That’s the life of a kicker in the NFL where every opportunity is pass-fail. Aguayo passed his rookie season – barely.

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