Blake Grupe had barely landed in Los Angeles when Sean McVay made clear there would be no kicking competition this week. The new Rams kicker gets the job outright against the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday, which also makes him the fifth kicker the franchise has used in four seasons since Matt Gay, the kicker on the Super Bowl LVI team, left town.
McVay’s reasoning was simple. He wanted the best available kicker with real game reps, and he didn’t want to split work in practice. “This guy has experience,” McVay said Tuesday, adding that he hopes Grupe builds on the momentum he had at the end of last season.
Why the leash is short in Inglewood
Harrison Mevis went 12 of 13 on field goals as a midseason signing last year and 6 of 6 in the playoffs. This season he was 5 of 9, with all four misses from beyond 40 yards, the most misses in the league. The last two came Monday night, a missed 50-yarder and a 48-yard try in overtime that Buffalo’s Greg Rousseau tipped. After the 37-34 loss, McVay said the field goal unit was “not even close to good enough.” Mevis was waived the next day.
Grupe’s résumé cuts both ways. He made 75 of 94 field goals in 45 games with the New Orleans Saints before being released last November, then made all 11 attempts in five games for the Indianapolis Colts, five of them from 40-plus. He lost the Colts’ camp battle to Spencer Shrader this summer, was claimed by the New York Jets, cut after Week 3 and kept on their practice squad. Special teams coordinator Bubba Ventrone, hired in January to fix a unit that cost the Rams multiple games last season, now gets his first look at Grupe with points on the line.
That is why Sunday matters. The Rams have had three field goals blocked since the start of last season, tied for the most in the NFL, and Over The Cap shows them with less than $1 million in cap space, so another outside fix would not come easily. A clean afternoon at SoFi Stadium buys Grupe time. A miss from 45 against a 1-4 team would have Rams fans checking the waiver wire by Monday morning.
