Matt Daniels Predicts a Big Year for Greg Joseph
Josh Frey
|
It’s been a while since there was any excitement for a Vikings place kicker going into an NFL season. Between the nightmarish Blair Walsh miss in the playoffs, to Dan Bailey’s disastrous stretch during the 2020 season, and even Greg Joseph’s missed game-winner in Week 2 of 2021, the Minnesota Vikings have had their fair share of frustrating moments regarding their kickers.
[brid autoplay=”true” video=”1066493″ player=”26281″ title=”What%20We%20Learned%20from%20the%201st%20Week%20of%20Vikings%20Training%20Camp” duration=”878″ description=”Dustin Baker lifts up the not-obvious items learned from Vikings training camp in July.” uploaddate=”2022-08-01″ thumbnailurl=”https://cdn.brid.tv/live/partners/19439/snapshot/1066493_th_1659379885.jpg” contentUrl=”//cdn.brid.tv/live/partners/19439/sd/1066493.mp4″ width=”16″ height=”9″]
Heading into 2022 though, Vikings special teams coordinator Matt Daniels has extremely high hopes for current kicker Greg Joseph this year. Aside from the miss against Arizona, 2021 was actually a quite good year for him. Setting career highs in field goal attempts from every distance as well as XP attempts, Joseph made 33 of 38 field goals and 36 of 40 XPs. His 33 field goal makes ranked fifth in the NFL.
Despite coming off this already impressive season, Daniels believes that 2022 will be Joseph’s best season yet. Here’s what the Vikings special teams coordinator had to say about his kicker:
“I’ll put it on record now and say that I firmly believe that Greg Joseph will have his best year in his career this year. I’ll put it out there right now, I’m sure of it. The way he finished up his summer, the way he prepared, and how he has come back and hit the football is the best that I’ve seen him. I’ve only been around him four, five months, but he…has missed two kicks out of 35 kicks that he had in three sessions that we’ve had.”
Vikings Special teams coordinator Matt Daniels on Greg Joseph’s offseason performances
The Vikings actually brought in another kicker, UDFA Gabe Brkic out of Oklahoma for OTAs. The undrafted free agent was on the roster for a couple weeks, but apparently that was all Minnesota needed to see as he was promptly cut and then signed with the Green Bay Packers. If Joseph actually has been as good as Daniels is proclaiming, and there’s no reason to believe otherwise, it makes a ton of sense why the kicking battle was so short this spring.
Aside from the big Greg Joseph prediction, Daniels also touched on the ongoing punter battle. The incumbent Jordan Berry has been in a battle with another UDFA, Ryan Wright out of Tulane. Wright punted 200 times over the course of his collegiate career, averaging 44.5 yards per punt. Daniels said that both players have been striking the ball well and even shed some light on how the Vikings have gone about grading each player’s reps. You can find all of his comments in the full press conference linked below.
There was no indication that Berry is in jeopardy of losing the competition as Wright was not even mentioned by name in the presser, but it was nice to get an update on how some of these special teamers are progressing in camp. We’ll see if they can live up to their coach’s hype in 2022.