Caleb Sturgis!

Caleb Sturgis Arguably, he had a year we would probably like to forget. Common sentiment around here seems to lie somewhere between "off with his head" and "let's ignore last year and hope for better in 2014". You can't really blame them looking at the stats; only two kickers had a worse field goal percentage than his 76.5% (26/34), and his dismal 55.6% (5/9) against the AFC East is especially startling. Adding insult to injury is that Dan Carpenter went 91.1% (33/36) for Bufallo, including going 7/7 against the Dolphins. However the stats rarely tell the whole story, so I thought I'd take a closer look at his season:

Flying High If you're a kicker and you're drafted, you'd better be good - and if your're drafted in the fifth round, you'd better be great. At first, Sturgis was better than advertised. He outplayed Carpenter in camp, and throughout his preseason games he was perfect. He was so perfect that every kick seemed to be going straight down the middle. He was also perfect the first four games of the season, plus his first three attempts against Baltimore, and seemed every bit worth his lofty draft status by starting his career going 10 for 10.

Crashing Down to Earth With 38 seconds left in the game against Baltimore, the Dolphins give a Sturgis a chance at his first game winner, the only problem is it's unfortunately a 57-yarder. This is the first of his eight missed field goals of the season, though you can't rake him over the coals too much for this one. His next attempt is the following game against Bufallo, a 51-yarder that hits the upright. The next week against New England, he misses a 46-yarder that again hits the upright, and this was actually a pretty good kick; the commentators were remarking on the strength of the wind and how Sturgis probably kicked it off center exactly where he wanted to. Later on that game, he has his third field goal of the day blocked. What do these two field goals have in common? Tannehill was sacked on the play before, each losing 6 yards. In fact, Tannehill was sacked during 4 of the 8 drives that resulted in missed field goals. Week 9 against the Bengals, the weight of the previous few weeks finally seem to manifest with a horrible 34-yarder way wide in the first quarter. This was the first bad kick I saw all year and seemed the perfect exclamation point to his worst stretch of the season where he missed 5 of 6.

The Good plus the Bad Equal? How does Caleb Sturgis respond to his first 29 quarters of football that saw the highest highs and the lowest lows? Here is where you see the mettle of a man, and aside from the revelation that he can be streaky, I believe here is when you can start to ascertain what we may have in the future. He responds to his embarrassing miss in the Bengals game by finishing with two successful attempts, including his only attempt at a reasonable game winner (or tie-er in this case) with 16 seconds left from 44 yards out that sent the game to OT, which we would go on to win. He would continue to be perfect against TB and SD, and his first three attempts against Carolina, going 9/9 during this stretch before missing a 53-yarder. Over the next three games of the season he would go 6/8, missing a 41-yarder against the Jets, and 52-yarder against the Steelers. While the miss against the Jets was probably his second worst of the season, I can hardly fault him for the one in Pittsburgh with snow on the ground (where the visitors have only made 50+ once ever).

Kick Offs What about that other thing kickers do? Sturgis averaged 50.67% touchback percentage on kick offs this year, good enough for #16 in the league, which is an improvement from Dan Carpenter's 47.14% last year (and his 40.96% this year). Our kick returns against also improved to 22.9 yards (#15) from 24.8 yards (#23) last year, and we gave up no touchdowns.

Sooooo... Maybe he isn't as bad as he looks on paper. Out of eight misses, four were 50+ (two were pipe dreams), one was blocked, and two hit the post. The most heartening thing however may be that in his one reasonable chance to send the game into overtime, he rose to the occasion. (Ultimately, missing game winning kicks against the Jets and Cardinals last year, plus short kickoffs, and a big contract, was why Dan Carpenter was replaced.) After rewatching his 2013 season, my sentiment has evolved into "expecting great things in 2014" from Caleb Sturgis, who was our Rookie of the Year, arguably.

Epilogue There's one more noteworthy stat I found while researching this (using teamrankings.com, pro-football-reference.com, and NFL Game Rewind). Perhaps it's our good red zone defense, but Joe Philbin's Dolphins are ripe for opponents going for field goals. 2013's 2.5 field goal attempts against per game were the most in the NFL, and last year was also at 2.5 (3rd most). It's a strange contrast to Sparano's #1 (2010) and #4 (2011) ranking for most field goal attempts by the Dolphins.