How the Huskies Are Trying to Pull Grady Gross Out of His Slump

The usually steady place-kicker missed 6 of 7 in one perilous stretch.

UW kicker Grady Gross exchanges handshakes with a well-wisher. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Everything was going great for University of Washington place-kicker Grady Gross. He converted on his first six field-goal attempts of the season. He was confident and consistent every time he lined up a three-pointer.

However, the first crack in the foundation appeared when he experienced his first miss. On the final play of the first half against Northwestern, he pushed a 51-yard attempt left. That would have been a career long for him had he made it, by four yards, so it didn't seem like that big a deal.

However, Gross' comfort zone came unraveled on a trip to New Jersey to face Rutgers, which was highly uncharacteristic for him.

After making a 22-yarder early on, he misfired on three consecutive kicks from 42, 37 and 55, sending each of them left in the 21-18 loss in Piscataway. The 55-yarder came on the game's final play to tie and was long enough, but it sailed on him.

In 2023, he missed only four kicks over a 15-game season -- and here he nearly matched that in one outing.

All of a sudden, Gross was like a golfer with a quick, hurried swing rather than his normal rhythmic self, with the ball capable of going almost anywhere, and he became someone whose body language seemed to shift almost immediately.

His personal misery, however, wasn't quite over. Against Michigan, Gross pulled a 41-yarder left and had a 28-yard attempt blocked -- giving him six misses in seven attempts -- before he settled down and tied the game at 17 with a 28-yarder and gave the Huskies a 27-17 cushion with a 32-yard kick that was true.

Afterward, coach Jedd Fisch felt compelled to offer public words of encouragement for his field-goal man, a junior who doubles as a team captain.

"I believe in our kicker, I believe in him," Fisch said. "I see how hard he works every day. My heart breaks for him early in the game because those misses can obviously wear on a human."

Kicker Grady Gross connects against Michigan, making 2 of 4 against the Wolverines. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Yet with this becoming a lingering issue, Fisch also sought some guidance from Gary Zauner, a former NFL source, a retired special-teams coach who still does some consulting, which was first revealed during the NBC game telecast. In other words, the UW coach brought in a swing coach to settle down this unsettled kicker and try to rebuild his confidence.

While Gross connected on his last two field-goal attempts against Michigan, with a lot of pressure hanging on him in the nationally televised Big Ten match-up, he's probably still in recovery in terms of totally getting back in a groove. Repeated misses tend to shock you to your soul.

While Fisch went for a quick fix with having his kicker speak to what can be construed as a kicking therapist, the Husky coach acknowledged that anything more intensive such as mechanical adjustments wouldn't be introduced until the bye week, once there's an extended break in the action, following Saturday's game at Iowa.

"We weren’t going to really start incorporating things game week," Fisch said. "But in the bye week, some of the things that he’s done with some of his NFL kickers, in regards to the pattern of numbers of kicks, where you can take them from each hash, [can be used]."

Yet basically what it all comes down to is Gross removing all negative thoughts, swinging his foot like he used to and convincing himself he's still a great kicker.

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