ATLANTA — When asked about the kicking competition between Younghoe Koo and Lenny Krieg on Monday, Aug. 18, head coach Raheem Morris said while you never want to say any competition is over, Koo "looked great" in the preseason practices. So, too, did Krieg, but it was obvious early that it was Koo's race to win.
"Koo's got some emotional bank accounts with me," Morris said. "And I'll just leave it at that."
But like any bank account, funds can begin to dwindle without proven cash flow coming in. And in Atlanta, the kicking coffers are running out, and confidence in being able to make the next payment feels shaky at best.
Koo was placed on injured reserve in Week 16 of the Falcons' 2024 season. He was listed as having a hip injury. He missed the remainder of the season. But what happened prior to that IR placement evoked cause for concern about the kicking game in Atlanta.
Last season, Koo only converted 25 of his 34 total attempts. That success rate of 73.5% was the lowest he'd had as an Atlanta Falcon. The most glaring performance came in the Falcons' Week 10 20-17 loss to the New Orleans Saints. It was a game in which Koo missed three kicks that — in a contest as close as that one — would have made a difference. One of those kicks was blocked, but still.
This Sunday, in Week 1 against another NFC South foe, Koo missed a 44-yard field goal that would have sent the Falcons to overtime with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Instead, it gave them their first loss of the season. Now, there were more issues in Atlanta on Sunday than just the missed kick (and let's be honest: the dinked-in, 36-yard field goal from earlier in the game) . Atlanta struggled to run the ball as much as they struggles to stop it at times. Offense was stagnant. Defense gave up one-too-many Baker Mayfield scrambles that moved the chains. Koo's miss, especially considering the recent history, though, loomed large and obvious as an issue on top of others.
"Personally, I feel like being a kicker is an underrated job," Divine Deablo said postgame. "I feel like you only get one chance. It's a hard job, and I'm going to stand behind him every time. It's not his fault. It's everybody's fault. It's the whole team's fault, because we have to play better."
Including Sunday's loss, Koo is now 11-of-16 (68.5%) in his career on field goal attempts that would either tie a game or take the lead in the final minute of a game. Prior to Sunday, he had made seven straight in this type of end-of-game situation, which does speak to the "emotional bank account" Morris referred to this preseason.
What speaks to that bank account even further? The fact that Koo's eight points scored for the team Sunday made him the third-highest single scorer in Falcons history. With 700 points scored, he's behind only Matt Bryant and Morten Andersen in the history books.
"He's a guy who's made huge plays for this organization," Jake Matthews said.
And that's true, but the last couple of seasons have seen a decline in Koo's effectiveness. Here's a breakdown of Koo's success rate as a Falcon based on yardage.
- 35-39 yards: 29-of-33 (87.9%)
- 40-44 yards: 23-of-30 (76.7%)
- 45-49 yards: 24-of-29 (82.8%)
- 50+ yards: 29-of-40 (72.5%)
Those numbers and percentages in a vacuum are one thing, but looking at them over the course of the last two seasons is something else entirely. That's because many of Koo's misses from the groupings above? They have come recently, to the tune of 14 misses of his 27 total misses as a Falcon coming since 2023.
That number now moves to 15-of-28 misses with Sunday's 44-yarder on file. And what began as a question about Koo's health last year turns into a question of whether or not the Falcons have a kicking problem on their hands moving forward.
"He missed it," Morris said. "I am not going to sit here and pretend that I can tell you about the technique, or what happened with that miss. But we gotta make those kicks. That was a very make-able kick. And it's something that we have to lock in, make those kicks and get it done."
The next question was posed to Morris not too long thereafter: Would he be giving Krieg a shot at the kicking job?
"We gave him a shot to compete through the whole offseason," Morris said.
So, where does that leave Atlanta? In a spot where the team doesn't really know the next time the kicking game comes to pay up that the check will clear. And in a league that is won and lost in one-score games, that's a very difficult place to be.
