Packers Sign Veteran Kicker to Challenge Carlson

Greg Joseph spent the last three seasons with the Minnesota Vikings. He will challenge Anders Carlson, last year's sixth-round pick.

Green Bay Packers v Minnesota Vikings / Adam Bettcher/GettyImages

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers, indeed, will have a full-blown kicking competition.

The Packers signed veteran kicker Greg Joseph on Tuesday, agent Brett Tessler posted on X, to battle Anders Carlson.

The transaction was not a surprise; the Packers tried to sign a kicker earlier in the offseason. Joseph was the best kicker on the market.

Joseph, who will turn 30 early in training camp, entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent in 2018. He kicked for the Cleveland Browns as a rookie and a couple games for the Tennessee Titans in 2019. He spent 2020 on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ practice squad before taking over as the Minnesota Vikings’ kicker the past three seasons.

During that time, Joseph made 82.6 percent of his field goals and 90.3 percent of his point-after attempts. Close to three-fourths of his kickoffs resulted in touchbacks. From inside of 40 yards, he was 51-of-52. From 40 to 49 yards, he was 17-of-23. From 50-plus, he was 15-of-26. That includes a Vikings-record 61-yarder in 2022.

Last year, he was 24-of-30 on field goals (80.0 percent) and 36-of-38 on extra points (94.7 percent).

His numbers with the Vikings - with more than half of his games being played indoors - aren’t all that different than Carlson with the Packers. As a rookie, Carlson made 27-of-33 field goals (81.8 percent) and 34-of-39 extra points (87.2 percent).

Carlson slumped after a hot start and never got out of it.

“He’s got to improve. That’s important,” general manager Brian Gutekunst said of Carlson at the Scouting Combine. “I thought he did some really good things this year and he improved as the year went on, but that’s going to be important, and competition is going to be part of that.

“I think he had a good rookie year. You look at rookie years in the past around here, it’s tough to kick in this weather as everyone knows. I think he had a pretty solid year, but there’s going to need to be a curve of getting better if that’s going to continue. I do like the way he approaches it. He’s very calm and handles the pressure very well. I’m excited to see what he does in Year 2, but there will be competition in the room.”

Carlson was a sixth-round draft pick last year, the last of three kickers selected.

His rookie season started with a bang. Through five weeks, he was 7-of-7 on field goals and 10-of-10 on extra points. However, he missed one kick in 10 of the final 12 games in the regular season and both playoff games. Among the misses: a 43-yard field goal in a two-point loss at Denver, an extra point that forced the Packers to try to score a late touchdown in a four-point loss to Pittsburgh and a 45-yard field goal in a two-point loss to the Giants.

With the Packers marching into a divisional-round showdown at the 49ers, Carlson stuck in a miss-a-game rut and special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia increasingly agitated by questions, the team never really considered adding a veteran.

“We’d like to get through it without any hiccups, but I think it’s part of the process,” coach Matt LaFleur said at the time.

Predictably, there was another hiccup. In the three-point loss to the Niners, Carlson missed a 41-yard field goal that would have given the Packers a 24-17 lead midway through the fourth quarter. The 49ers took the miss and drove to the decisive touchdown.

In regular-season action, nobody missed more kicks than Carlson’s 11. Of 31 kickers who tried at least 20 field goals, Carlson finished 23rd on field goals with an 81.8 percent success rate. He missed a league-high five extra points.

The other drafted kickers were Jake Moody by the 49ers in the third round and Chad Ryland by the Patriots in the fourth round. Moody ranked 19th in field-goal accuracy (84.0 percent) and missed one extra point. Ryland was worst in the NFL on field goals (64.0 percent) and also missed one extra point.

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