How to win a kicking job and influence others
Tampa Bay Buccaneers kicker Matt Bryant went on 97X in Tampa Thursday morning and had some choice words for his kicking competition, Mike Nugent.
“We pretty much go about our business,” Bryant said. “It’s not like we’re shutting the door on somebody’s foot. But the other day, it dawned on me. He made some comment a while back when he was asked why he would sign here, and he said he thought this was the best opportunity for him.
“Did they tell him something to make him think this was the best opportunity? Or did he look at a number of teams and single me out? If he singled me out, then he’s out of his damn mind. If I would have been 100 percent healthy, like we do back home, you take somebody out behind the woodshed and kick their butt. But that hasn’t been the case, so you go on with your business.”
He also insinuated that head coach Raheem Morris and GM Mark Domenik haven’t been entirely truthful with him. He referred to Morris encouraging him to kick through his injury.
“I noticed that Raheem got a lot of flack from that newspaper article,” Bryant said. “I can tell you he wasn’t the only one in the room.”
After throwing his head coach and GM under the bus, he took an additional swipe at Nugent, criticizing his preseason performance.
“It’s not necessarily going to be Nugent,” he said. “You’ve seen the preseason? Even though that could be your next $2.5 million kicker. There’s different things that could happen. They could very well go with him or they could give me a little more time to get a little stronger. They could go with somebody from another team. There’s so many different options.”
Considering how much juice placekickers have in the locker room, this will definitely endear him to his teammates and management. While this isn’t as good as the argument between Dan Uggla and Hanley Ramirez, it’s still great stuff.
