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Missed kicks taught Bucs’ Cairo Santos to stay true to his leg

Every game offers a lesson, he said, and Sunday's told him not to give the wind too much credit, especially in Tampa.
 
Published Dec. 14, 2018
TAMPA — Cairo Santos knows that perfection doesn’t last when you’re a kicker.
In his first three games with the Bucs, he made every field-goal attempt and each extra-point try. But with a pair of field-goal misses in Sunday’s 28-14 loss to the New Orleans Saints, Santos quickly brought himself into the Bucs’ dubious narrative of place-kicking problems.
Missed kicks have held too significant a role in the Bucs’ laundry list of “what ifs” that have consumed this team’s 5-8 season, and Santos’ two misses on Sunday were ill-timed, to say the least.
Santos’ first miss, a 46-yard attempt that hit the right upright, could have given the Bucs a two-possession lead. The second, a 40-yard try that sailed wide right, could have given Tampa Bay a two-touchdown lead.
The two misses, along with another special teams blunder — a third-quarter blocked punt — opened the door of opportunity that good teams like New Orleans often burst through. And the Saints did just that, scoring on four straight possessions following the blocked punt.
“It’s a lesson to be learned for sure, and I’m definitely frustrated about it because I’ve been hitting the ball a lot better,” Santos said Wednesday in between studying film of Sunday’s opponent, the Baltimore Ravens, at his locker. “I still think I hit the ball good in those kicks, it’s just,  I think, misjudging the wind.”
Santos had entered the day having made all three of his field-goal attempts and each of his 11 extra-point tries. Including his brief time with the Rams, Santos had made 20 straight kicks.
While Santos is still new to Tampa Bay, four games into his Bucs career, he doesn’t need to be reminded of the ghosts of Bucs kickers past. He was made well aware of it when he joined the team last month.
After the game, Santos was perplexed about how the ball came off his foot on those kicks — one that hit the right upright and the other sailed wide right — differently than it did in pregame warmups.
“I didn’t see it on tape, I just see how the ref didn’t do this,” Bucs coach Dirk Koetter said Monday while putting his arms up and making a successful field-goal motion. You know? He did the other signal. I’m not putting any more blame on anybody else, but Cairo’s got to make those kicks. He knows it, I know it. He’s going to make most.”
So many things go into a kicker’s head when lining up for a field goal: Field conditions, temperature, wind, rain. And each stadium has its own kicking quirks. After playing the last three weeks at home at Raymond James Stadium, he’s forming his own scouting report on the Bucs’ home stadium.
“You know, I think out of the three games at Raymond James, I think that was the easiest one as far as the wind was concerned,” Santos said. “Sometimes you just maybe overthink it. I think the way I was lining up my kicks, I was probably respecting the wind a little too much, and maybe thought it was doing more than it was doing.”
Every game offers a lesson, Santos said. And Sunday’s told him to stay true to his leg and not give the wind too much credit, especially in Tampa.
“I think it feels like there’s more wind than it actually affects the ball. I think that’s something that kind of changes from stadium to stadium,” Santos said. “There are stadiums where the wind blows (harder) and you can actually see the curves on the ball fly. I think this one is getting more and more sure that’s it’s all about hitting a good ball and not aiming so much.
“I think my two extra points, on extra points, it’s so close that there’s not much time for the wind to even touch the ball, so I just try to aim down the middle and hit it hard. So maybe if I had done it on the field goals as well, it would have stayed true, because the extra points flew right down the middle and the ball didn’t move a single bit either way. So that’s what I’m kind of learning, to kind of act like we’re playing indoors in a dome or something and just hit a good ball.”
All five misses by Bucs kickers at home have been either wide right or off the right upright. Before Santos’ two misses on Sunday, former kicker Chandler Catanzaro missed one field goal against Cleveland, and two field goals wide right against Washington, the latter of which led to his release. Catanzaro also missed four extra-point tries.
Also, Bucs kickers are 13-for-14 overall from inside 40 yards, and just 2-for-7 from beyond that. That includes a 1-for-6 mark between 40 and 49 yards. The Bucs’ only kick beyond that this season was Catanzaro’s 57-yard game-winner in overtime against the Browns.
“For whatever reason, between 40 and 49 yards this year, we can’t make a kick,” Koetter said. “We’re pretty good under 40 and over 50, but we can’t make a kick between 40 and 49.”
With rain and wind likely this Sunday in Baltimore, where temperatures are likely to be in the 40s,  Santos will again have to take the conditions into account. But he said he’s going to try to not let his observations outweigh kicking the ball with conviction.
“I’m proud with how I handled the Panthers game because the wind was so tricky in every direction, and I just tried to kick down the middle. And, luckily, we had short attempts, so it really didn’t get tested,” Santos said. “So to go out there and really get tested, it obviously didn’t come out the way I wanted compared to the way I was hitting the ball in warmups.
“But it’s a lesson that I’m learning to just trust hitting the ball down the middle and if it moves off the middle you’ve got some serious wind,” Santos said. “But if you do what I did and  just kind of play too much wind, it can get you in trouble. But I’m thankful those things happened because it makes you a better kicker.”
Contact Eduardo A. Encina at eencina@tampabay.com. Follow @EddieInTheYard.