Most likely, one of two things will happen Sunday in the Falcons game at Denver.
Either slumping kicker Younghoe Koo will show how mentally strong he is or coach Raheem Morris will reveal how deep his confidence in him runs.
Over the course of his Falcons career, Koo has provided reason to back him through the rut he has found himself in. His historic accuracy and his knack for clutch field goals speak for themselves.
That’s why Morris has been firmly in Koo’s corner as his right leg has gone errant over the past four games. The stretch includes arguably the most forgettable day of his seven-year career, when his performance (1-for-4 on field-goal tries, one of them blocked) factored significantly in the team’s loss Sunday in New Orleans.
Not only did Morris support Koo with votes of unfettered confidence after the game and then at news conferences Monday and Wednesday, but he and general manager Terry Fontenot showed it in their actions. The list of players worked out this week by the Falcons includes nary a kicker, according to the reportage of the esteemed Darryl Ledbetter.
“I don’t worry about Younghoe at all,” Morris said Wednesday.
However, aside from the never-ending pursuit of profit, nothing in the NFL lasts forever. If Koo’s kicks keep sliding wide of the uprights, Morris’ forbearance eventually will expire, particularly if those misses are as costly as they were Sunday.
Koo’s turbulence — 2-for-7 in the past four games — is unusual by NFL standards. Before Koo, the last time a kicker missed as many as five field-goal tries in a four-game span in a single season was 2021, according to Stathead. The last time that a kicker missed five in a four-game span while attempting as few as seven kicks was 2019.
Kickers normally aren’t this inaccurate, or they don’t get the chance to be for that long.
So, presumably, in the thin air of Denver, either Koo will regain his form or Morris will have to ask himself how much longer he can afford to wait for Koo to find it. (It also is a possibility that he doesn’t attempt any kicks.)
For what it’s worth, a kicking expert who has worked with Koo for most of his professional career believes in him. That would be John Carney, the former NFL kicker of 23 seasons who now runs a specialists training program in the San Diego area.
In 2017, Koo made the Los Angeles Chargers roster as a rookie out of Georgia Southern but was let go after four games, including two critical late-game misses (one blocked). Koo and Carney had been in communication up to that point but had yet to work together.
“And then when he left the Chargers, he literally showed up on our doorstep, I think it was a day later, and said, ‘OK, I’m ready,’” Carney told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this week. “I’m ready to go to work.’”
Carney said that what he did for Koo was to help him understand his technique.
“‘OK, this is what you do, this is your best foot position when you make contact, this is your tempo that works for you, this is the way you process your targeting,’” Carney said. “Really teach him about himself.”
Koo didn’t get another playing opportunity until 2019 in the now-defunct Alliance of American Football. He made all 14 of his field-goal attempts, leading to his signing with the Falcons in October 2019. He replaced another long-trusted Falcons kicker, Matt Bryant, who was cut after an inconsistent start to the season. Koo has been a Falcon since and is in the third year of a five-year extension.
Carney gushes with praise for Koo, calling him extremely talented and possessing an exceptionally strong mental game. He expressed his “utmost faith” in the kicker. And while it would be easy to imagine Koo falling into a pit of self-doubt after last week, that is not who Koo is, Carney said.
“I’ve known him long enough, and he’s like a number of elite specialists that are still playing right now or that have played prior to him that, they’ve run into a bump in the road and they figure it out fast, assess it and they have a plan to get out there and have a really positive impact on the team at their next opportunity,” Carney said. “And I think that’s the case with Younghoe.”
Unsurprisingly, Carney had no problems with the unorthodox change in style that Koo has undergone. This season, he has been lining up to take an almost straightforward path to the ball where most kickers approach from roughly a 45-degree angle. Carney called it a search for higher performance. (It’s worth noting that this change helped him make 15 of his first 17 tries, including a career-long 58-yarder to beat New Orleans at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sept. 29.)
“And so many of us will take that opportunity to increase our performance, and that doesn’t always happen overnight,” he said. “Sometimes that’s a process, but we do it not randomly, but we do it with good reason and with the intention of raising our level of performance to another height.”
To Carney, the slump is no different from a quarterback who has had a couple bad games or a basketball player in a cold streak.
“Every player goes through a series of events, and the strong ones, the ones that last a long time, they learn from the successes and the failures but they don’t dwell on it,” Carney said. “They learn from it and grow stronger from it, grow wiser from it and move forward.”
On Sunday, Koo will reveal his level of strength and wisdom. A coach will watch. A fan base will fret.
“I hope the people of Atlanta take a deep breath,” Carney said. “It’s going to be good. Younghoe’s going to be fine.”
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