Carpenter getting a leg up in Miami

By Jeff Dickinson  |   Monday, August 25, 2008  |  Comments( 4 )

Miami Dolphins
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Often thought of as something less than athletes who spend more time during football games on the bench than the field, kickers have always been a different breed in the NFL.

In a pickup game of touch football, kickers are probably going to be the last ones chosen.

That is, however, unless they happen to be the Miami Dolphins' Dan Carpenter.

Carpenter, the 22-year-old rookie who beat out veteran Jay Feely for the starting job, isn’t your average pick-me-last kind of kicker. Rather, Carpenter is an athlete who just so happens to be a kicker.

Carpenter can kick; you don’t beat out a guy like Feely unless you can. Feely set the Dolphins’ franchise record for field goal accuracy last season by connecting on 21-of-23 kicks.

But Carpenter is also an athlete. While he was a senior at Helena High School in Montana, Carpenter was a second-team all-state selection as a wide receiver. He finished that season with 13 touchdown catches for almost 1,000 yards.

As a Dolphin, Carpenter has fared perfectly since becoming the starting kicker. In the opening preseason game against Tampa Bay, Carpenter connected on both of his field goal attempts.

The next week in a game against Jacksonville, Carpenter continued to impress, becoming only the second Dolphins kicker since Olindo Mare to make four field goals in a preseason contest. Carpenter made all four of his field goal tries and his only extra point in Miami’s 19-14 victory over the Jaguars.

Last week against the Chiefs, Carpenter was 3-for-3 on extra points and hit his only field goal attempt. All told, Carpenter is 4-for-4 on his preseason extra points and 7-of-7 on his field goals. You can’t get better than that.

Although Carpenter has been accurate this preseason, a lack of precision is obviously not what led to Feely's Miami demise. As evidenced by his record-setting ’07 season, Feely was an accurate kicker for the Dolphins. The problem was his leg strength.

Feely averaged 57.8 yards per kickoff last season. That means Miami’s opponents received Feely’s kickoffs just outside their own 12-yard line. Carpenter, on the other hand, averaged almost 64 yards per kickoff last year, which would have given the University of Montana’s foes the ball at their own 6.

If the Dolphins get can get extra oomph on kickoffs and continued success on field goals tries from Carpenter, the accurate Feely will be forgotten quickly.

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About Jeff Dickinson

I have been writing and editing professionally for 18 years. I spent the first three years of my career as a sportswriter for a daily newspaper in Alabama and got to cover sports and get paid for it! It was great until I got married and then it wasn't too much fun being away from my wife every ...
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