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Jason Sanders – December 2, 2020 Download PDF version

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

K Jason Sanders

(I found what is possibly the greatest statistic of all time. Your career field goal percentage is better than Michael Jordan’s career free throw percentage, which is a shocking number. What are your thoughts on that?) – “(laughter) The fact that you know that information is kind of funny to me, but I don’t know. I don’t know how you can compare it. You’re comparing someone who’s only done it for three years to somebody that’s done it for a very long time. I’m just happy with where I’m at right now. I’ve been kicking the ball really well and I’m just excited to see where it’s going to go, so I’ve got four or five more weeks to just focus on one game at a time.”

(I’m going to come at you with some more stats – maybe not quite as good as the previous ones – but I was looking at some kickoff return yardage against stats and you guys lead the league with just 16.8 yards allowed per return. I was curious what overall contributes to getting stops on kickoffs and what’s your goal when your plan as a kicker is to not punch it out of the back of the end zone? Like what’s your target point when you’re kicking off not going for a touchback?) – “You got two kicks – you can try and pound it out of the end zone or you can try and hang it up for a little more hang time and make it a returnable ball; but we’ve got a lot of thanks to our cover guys. We have a lot of good guys on kickoff, so they’ve been doing a lot of good work this year and you’ve got to give props to (Special Teams Coordinator Danny) Crossman, too. Everything we do is a play from Crossman.”

(I know that sometimes like with soccer players, they will train using an especially small target in order to help their accuracy and you being now the most accurate kicker in Dolphins history, I couldn’t help but wonder what do you do to improve your accuracy? Do you have any special drills that are out of the ordinary or do you train on an especially small goalpost? How do you perfect it?) – “It all starts with picking a small target in your background, so when I’m kicking field goals, I like to define a small target in the stadium. It could be a pole, it could be lettering on the stadium. But in the offseason I’m doing the same drills I do basically now, so the only difference in the offseason to now is there’s a couple days that I might just kick at a pole so I’m aiming at a smaller target. But other than that, I just want to treat every time I’m kicking the ball, I just want to treat it the same swing. So I don’t want to develop a short field goal swing or a long field goal swing. I want to be able to have that same swing going through every kick.”

(I imagine there are some other teams out there, some other field goal kickers that don’t provide a sense of security or safety knowing that when the kicker trots out, three points will not be an option; but it’s not that for you. I think your teammates probably have a little bit more comfort when you come out on the field, your coaches, too. Do you have a sense of pride in maybe providing that for your teammates and the coaches?) – “Yeah, but it also makes it a lot easier to kick field goals when you have a snapper that’s giving you a great ball all the time and in case of a bad ball, you’ve got Matt (Haack), who is arguably one of the better holders in the league that puts the ball down almost perfectly. So when you have a good team working with you, it makes me be able to focus on kicking the ball and not other factors that might affect the kick. So I think a lot of the focus on me, myself; but because I have good people surrounding me, it makes it that much easier, too.”

(Just wanted to follow up on that note. I remember as a rookie, we had talked to former Special Teams Coordinator Darren Rizzi about you not having that kind of stability in college. How much of a factor really is that, as we’ve you have such better success here in the NFL than you did in college?) – “I struggled a lot in college my first two years. I didn’t really find my stride until my junior year; but when I found it, it all fell back on confidence. Each kick, running out on the field, if you truly believe that you’re going to make that kick or you’re still confident in yourself, then chances are you’re going to go out there and do a good job. Right now, I can’t go out there thinking ‘tough winds, I might not make this kick.’ So that’s kind of what’s helped me a lot this season, is just trusting myself and just worrying about myself instead of everything else.”

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