Aug 5th 2008 4:05PM by Tom Mantzouranis (author feed)
Filed under: Giants, NFC East
Don’t worry about a thing, Giants fans. Yes, it’s true that your dependable kicker Lawrence Tynes, the man who kicked the Giants to the Super Bowl, has had a pretty bad training camp. But it’s not his fault.
The fields? I think they’re terrible,” he said. “We’ll never play on a field (with grass) that long.”
…
“The grass is long, it’s soft, it’s uphill or downhill,” he said. “But we’ve got to deal with it. I agree with Jay, Josh (Huston) said it, I said it, it’s not conducive to hitting … The spot where I want to kick the ball, I never see it because the grass is too long.
That field is located at University of Albany, which is, you may be surprised to learn, the same field Tynes has missed all 23 of his career field goals, or 20.2%, on. They actually picked up the field and moved it to Lambeau specifically for that playoff game.
Which is to say: I might be more inclined to believe Tynes that his poor camp is the field’s fault if he didn’t have a history of missing kicks on all sorts of various playing surfaces. If I were a Giants fan, I wouldn’t exactly have faith in Tynes’ proclamation that he’ll “be fine.” In fact, I’d see him as the team’s single biggest threat to returning to the Super Bowl.
