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With the NFL enjoying a stupidly long off-season (in my opinion), I reached out to the Jets faithful on Twitter to ask for the questions you want answering, and I'll be covering a few over the coming days.
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I plan on touching on Lac Edwards in another piece, so today I'm focusing in on Catanzaro.
For the first time since 2009, the Jets will have someone other than Nick Folk kicking field goals, back then it was Jay Feely, in 2017 it'll be former Cardinal Chandler Catanzaro. With a lot of questions surrounding the Jets in general, the special teams play has largely fallen under the radar, but both Chandler Catanzaro and Lac Edwards have points to prove in 2017.
The Jets have largely enjoyed consistent play with Folk, there were some ups and down but as far as kickers go, you knew what you were getting, at least recently where he kicked a minimum of 80% over the last four years. Consistency has been anything but Catanzaro's strength over his 3 year career. He's been excellent, kicking 90.3% of his field goals in 2015, and downright poor, kicking 75% of his field goals in 2016.
Before the 2015 season, NFL owners agreed to move the distance of an extra point try back to the 15 yard line, only Washington and Oakland voted no on the new proposal, but maybe the Cardinals should have as well. In 2014 before the rule change, Catanzaro didn't miss a single extra point. Over the last two years he's missed 9, which is quite a significant amount. Games have been lost on missed extra points, so this will be something worth watching for the Jets.
There were several rumours last year that the Cardinals were looking to replace Chandler in-season, which probably wasn't helped when Bruce Arians made the following comment. Believe it or not, this comment was made at the same time as he publicly stated he supported Chandler.
"No, the kicker just needs to kick it through the two poles, and we'd be 5-2,"
To his credit, his leg strength has rarely been questioned. In terms of forcing a touchback, Catanzano has been ranked 10th (2016) and 1st (2015) over the last two years. Consistency is the key for Catanzaro, he can't really afford another 2016 type season on his resume, the Jets do have Ross Martin in camp to share kicking duties but it would be a surprise to see him win the job over Catanzaro.