Green Bay Packers: Mason Crosby needs more competition in camp

After a down season in 2018 from Mason Crosby, the Green Bay Packers should bring in more competition for Training Camp this summer.

For much of Mason Crosby’s tenure with the Green Bay Packers, he has given them the luxury of not having to worry about the kicker position as he has been one of the most consistent kickers in the NFL for more than a decade.

Although Crosby may be the Green Bay Packers all-time leading scorer, he isn’t immune from struggling as we saw in 2018. If we look at Crosby’s overall season, he hit 81.1 percent of his field goals, but that number doesn’t tell the whole story.

It was the kicks in big moments that hurt him and the team the most.

Early in the season against the Minnesota Vikings in week two, Crosby would miss a game-winning attempt as time expired and the two teams would end up finishing in a tie.

Then in Detroit, Crosby would go 1/5 on field goal attempts and he would miss his only extra point attempt. And while there was plenty of blame to go around that week, the Packers would lose by just nine points.

Lastly, when facing Arizona in December, Crosby missed a kick at the end of regulation to send the game to overtime and led to another Packers loss.

As a result, the Green Bay Packers signed Sam Ficken this offseason who has already been on a few NFL teams most notably of which is the L.A. Rams. However, this won’t be the first time that the Packers brought in a kicker to compete with Crosby.

After an uncharacteristically poor season in 2012 where Crosby would make only 21/33 attempts, the Packers would bring in Giorgio Tavechio the following training camp. As we all know, Crosby would remain the starter and went on to a fantastic 2013 season where he would make a career-high 89.2 percent of his field goals.

What both Ficken and Tavechio have in common is their inexperience. Ficken is just 3/6 in his short career and when Tavechio was brought in, he had never played in a regular season NFL game at that point.

So my question in all of this is, how much does bringing in a player like Ficken really push Crosby?

As an NFL veteran who has hit a number of game-winners over his career, Crosby’s experience alone should be enough for him to out-class any kicker who has limited attempts in the NFL.

With Crosby in the final year of his contract, there is the very real possibility that the Packers will just play this year out with him and see how he does. If anyone has earned that right, it is Mason Crosby, but that shouldn’t stop the team from challenging him.

Now, after reading this your conclusion may be that I want Crosby out, but I don’t. After a down season and some crucial misses in big moments, I just think that bringing in serious competition during Training Camp is something worth considering. And until proven otherwise, I would expect Crosby to prevail against whoever is brought in.

With that said, the added competition from a veteran presence would hopefully bring out the best in Crosby and propel him to another stellar season in what has been a wonderful career.