Many fans got what they wished for on Sunday: kicker Lucas Havrisik in the lineup with Brandon McManus out. The end result was two missed PATs, but the Green Bay Packers still won 27-20.
Is it too early to say “told you so” about the entire kicking situation?
To preface all of this, Green Bay’s staff has done themselves no favors in the way they have presented McManus’ injury throughout the entire timeline. On top of that, they didn’t bench McManus against the New York Giants. He reported tightness in his quad on Saturday and was inactive Sunday, prompting Havrisik to take over for the day.
There have been two ongoing ordeals within this whole kicker dilemma. The first is the unknown severity and significance of McManus’ injury. The second is how people were talking about Havrisik and the hilarious expectations they set.
If you didn’t know any better, you’d have thought the Packers were sitting prime Adam Vinatieri in favor of McManus over the last few weeks. Havrisik was nails in his two outings for Green Bay against Cincinnati and Arizona, going four for four on field goal tries and six for six on PATs. The cherry on top came in Arizona when Havrisik connected on a franchise-record 61-yard field-goal attempt.
When the Packers deemed McManus healthy enough to return, they gave him the nod. In what most would consider a fairly typical plan of attack, a ton of Green Bay fans were up in arms. To them, the Packers were going with McManus instead of the next coming of Brandon Aubrey.
McManus returned and went four for eight combined on field-goal attempts against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Carolina Panthers, and Philadelphia Eagles. The frustrations grew loud from the outside toward a kicker who came to Green Bay midseason a year ago, went 20 for 21 on field-goal attempts, and looked like a savior compared to what Brayden Narveson and Anders Carlson had displayed before his arrival.
Oh, how quickly things can change.
Fans got their wish on Sunday with Havrisik taking over. However, after two missed PATs, there was a hush on social media from those who had been so vocal over the past few games.
Some still went to bat for Havrisik, proclaiming the laces were in on one of the tries (they were indeed) and that wind played a factor in both misses. However, Matt LaFleur wasn’t having it postgame when asked if wind played a factor.
“I mean, I don’t know. I’m not a kicker,” LaFleur said. “But it certainly, I think it was impactful. But the bottom line is, and we experience this quite often in our practice facility where it is windy, and you ultimately you got to find a way.”
For the record, this isn’t a bash party on Havrisik. He came in when McManus clearly wasn’t good enough to go and delivered every single time for the Packers against the Cincinnati Bengals and Arizona Cardinals. It’s pointing out how silly it was for many to proclaim Green Bay didn’t know what it was doing by sitting Havrisik in favor of McManus.
If the premise is that McManus wasn’t healthy enough, fine, but one that none of us outside the building truly know. If the premise was that Havrisik is far superior, as many have claimed, it’s just not rooted in fact.
Havrisik missed five field-goal attempts in 20 tries and missed an additional three PATs for the Los Angeles Rams in 2023 before being let go. He did not appear in a game for any team in 2024.
Green Bay took a flier when McManus sat out Week 5 and Week 6, and Havrisik was really good. The sample size was still really small, and not large enough to warrant releasing McManus after signing him to a three-year extension in the offseason.
The way Green Bay went about answering any kicking questions recently created confusion. Still, the Packers can handle it however they want. That’s their prerogative. It’s also possible that the severity of McManus’s injury is touch-and-go. However, nobody can dispute that, when healthy, McManus has been really damn good for Green Bay.
It’s easy to fall in love with the replacement who has a lot of pressure to step in and step up and then delivers. It’s also not far-fetched to believe Havrisik could thrive if given another full-time shot in the NFL. Where things got off the rails was the pocket of people bellowing, making it sound like the Packers were making a radical choice to roll with the veteran McManus if he was deemed healthy enough.
The two missed PATs from Havrisik on Sunday weren’t what anyone clamored for. If anything, it provided more instability to a position that McManus appeared to have locked down when he came in last year.
Green Bay’s path forward should still be clear: Whenever McManus is cleared and 100% to go, he should be the kicker until further notice. The Packers shouldn’t bring him back until he’s fully healthy, though. Until then, roll with Havrisik and cross your fingers.
Sunday showed how easy it is to sit behind the phone and hammer out tweets without a realistic grasp of the situation.
