The LA Rams are just one of 32 NFL teams that must adapt to the new kickoff rules. But the new kickoff rules are more likely to impact the team’s punter, Ethan Evans, than either of the two placekickers on the roster for the 2024 LA Rams Training Camp. The Rams have plenty of work for the new kickoff rules. But this is an article about field goal kickers.
That places the focus of this article on rookie kicker Joshua Karty, and last year’s rookie kicker Tanner Brown. The team signed Brown to a Reserve Future contract as soon as they played their last football game. Now, both Karty and Brown are competing for the starting field kicker job on the team.
And neither are willing to allow the other to get the job without a fight.
It’s a lot of pressure to arrive at the NFL, suit up in an NFL football uniform, and just start kicking footballs through the uprights. Clearly, neither Tanner Brown nor Christopher Dunn, the two undrafted rookie placekickers who competed for the starting kicker role in 2023, were able to get over the novelty of the NFL well enough to lock down the starting kicker role.
And that created a domino effect that lasted throughout the 2023 NFL season, with the team rifling through multiple kickers, and trialing two kickers multiple times.
But that was then, this is now. And now the team has a real battle on their hands at the Rams training camp. Not only does the team have one of the most renowned rookie kickers of the 2024 NFL Draft, but this team wise brought back last year’s rookie kicker Tanner Brown. And as we had foreseen months ago, do not expect Brown to roll over and play dead. In many ways, the Rams’ competition for the starting field goal kicker job is one of the fiercest of training camp.
And that has been confirmed by ST Coordinator Chase Blackburn above, as he relates to the two kickers at the 8:20 mark of the embedded video above.
“(Joshua Karty has) Done well. Obviously, I think once we get to the actual uprights – that’s one of the issues here. We just haven’t been able to get the uprights in so we all have the skinnies. So it’s going to look huge when we get to SoFi. That’s a good thing. So, no. But both him and Tanner (Brown) have been kicking really well. (It is a) Really tight competition. Everyone has had (a) really solid camp. Taken off exactly where they were in the offseason. Feeling really good about where they are at and where their mental state is and all those types of things.”
Of course, with the Rams drafting Joshua Karty, all ties in terms of competition will likely go his way. Tanner Brown must effectively beat out Joshua Karty in training camp and preseason. But I wouldn’t say that the competition is over just yet.
At the very least, the Rams could end up with a surplus of place kickers as the team comes to their 53-man roster deadline. Then, just as the team had done with former punter Corey Bojorquez in trading him to the Green Bay Packers, the team could negotiate a trade to a kicker-needy NFL team at the wire.
For now, the team has two kickers engaged in heated competition to win the starting kicker job for the 2024 NFL season. While competition ultimately means a winner and a loser, the Rams will end up in the winner’s circle as well.
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