Cheesehead
Well-known member
- Mar 19, 2019
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By special request: Family Night wasn’t going exactly the way Sam Ficken wanted when the first-year kicker requested a chance at some late redemption.
Following earlier misses from 40, 50 and 54 yards during practice, Ficken asked the coaching staff if he could try a 63-yarder to wrap up the final field-goal period of the practice, which lasted one hour, 43 minutes.
And after drilling field goals from 51 and 54 yards, the 24-year-old completed the hat trick with the lengthy final attempt to finish 9-of-12, leading to most of the 90-man roster mobbing Ficken at midfield.
“(They) mentioned the distances and I said, ‘If we go that way, I’d like to get a long one in,’” Ficken said. “Obviously, with the way the night went for me, I was frustrated and I wanted to do something to flip the script a little bit.”
Ficken has taken all the kicker reps through the first eight practices of training camp with Mason Crosby (calf) still on the non-football injury list. While he thought it was “really cool” how the team embraced him after the 63-yarder, Ficken also acknowledges it’s those 50-yarders he needs to convert on.
“How many times are you going to hit a 63-yarder? Probably not that many,” Ficken said. “How many times are you going to hit a 50-yarder? Probably quite a few. So let’s focus on the ones I need to make and we’ll look at the film and get it corrected.”