The 2nd kick traveled off of Alex Kessman’s foot equivalent to how the first one did. He tucked his head, he stepped against the ball, made contact alongside with his staunch cleat after which watched as it tailed extra and further left — curling far from the staunch fully.
With three minutes left within the first quarter, the Jets had ethical scored their 2nd touchdown, this time on a 1-yard quarterback walk by Zach Wilson, to pull motivate in entrance of the Eagles by five. Nonetheless that’s the attach the bag stayed after Kessman overlooked his 2nd extra point of the day.
“Factual gotta create them,” Kessman acknowledged. “It’s what I attain for a living, and I gotta create these kicks. There’s no excuses.”
The Jets’ 33-18 loss to the Eagles on Sunday contained a porous protection and strides by Wilson, and it additionally contained a reminder that their kicking topic stays unsolved. Kessman’s pair of misses thrust more uncertainty into their kicker space after they made the change from Matt Ammendola this past week, with empty alternatives still emerging even after pivoting to the personnel’s eighth utterly different kicker since 2017.
“I gotta withhold watch over what I will withhold watch over,” Kessman acknowledged. “Within the event that they ship me available to kick, I scoot available and kick. Doesn’t matter the attach from, what time. I scoot available and accomplish my job, and I didn’t attain my job this day. Easy and simple. … I’m no longer gonna let two kicks give an explanation for me and the kicker I’m.”
Nonetheless when a personnel’s kicking space sits in flux, that’s precisely what happens. Sample sizes change into smaller because there’s an elevated desperation for an answer. The Jets released Ammendola on Saturday after he went 13 of 19 on topic objectives, and 14 of 15 on extra parts, and pivoted to Kessman following a opponents at follow this past week. Ammendola won the job out of coaching camp however overlooked one other topic neutral against Houston closing week, while Kessman, an undrafted rookie out of Pittsburgh, at the initiating signed with the Panthers sooner than landing on the Jets’ follow squad Nov. 23.
Kessman fully overlooked four extra parts and made 72 percent of his topic objectives at school, impressing particular teams coach Brant Boyer with “accurate solid leg abilities.” Nonetheless after Wilson hit Elijah Moore for a 3-yard touchdown on their first power of the game, the ball started hooking nearly at once after it left his foot. The 2nd extra-point are trying, nine minutes later, did the identical.
It left Jets head coach Robert Saleh in a neighborhood the attach he went for a two-point conversion after their third touchdown as a replace of turning motivate to Kessman. They scored on that power by going for it on fourth-and-1 from the 1-yard line as a replace of kicking the rapid topic neutral, too.
And when the ugliness of the loss settled — one defined by porous protection amid strides from their rookie quarterback — the kicking topic remained. Ammendola doesn’t obvious waivers till Monday at 4 p.m., handing Saleh one other positional probability, and one other are trying at discovering the elusive solution, in his shut to future.
“We obtained one more particular person within the constructing,” Saleh acknowledged, “and we’ll ethical withhold going till something works.”