Allen Park — In the 21 months since Dave Fipp was hired to serve as the Lions’ special teams coordinator, the team has employed 11 kickers, if you include his initial weeks on the job, after Matt Prater’s contract expired.
And although that carousel has continued to spin, Fipp isn’t second-guessing any step of the process as the team searches for its next long-term solution at the position.
The decision to move on from Prater, who was nearing his 37th birthday, was understandable, both from performance and financial standpoints. Despite an outstanding career, including seven fruitful years in Detroit, he had been coming off one of the worst seasons of his career. And for a team set to enter a full-scale rebuild, committing valuable cap space to an aging kicker wasn’t a priority. So he departed as a free agent, signing a two-year, $6.5 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals.
“Ultimately, those are tough conversations,” Fipp said Thursday. “There’s just so much to building the roster. It’s a lot of different things that go into it. That’s not my deal. That wasn’t my decision. Ultimately, that’s (general manager) Brad (Holmes), (coach) Dan (Campbell) and those guys, and I trust them. They’re trying to build a roster and you’ve got to make a lot of hard decisions. Yeah, it’s easy to second-guess everything after the fact, but I don’t second-guess anything we’ve done.”
That includes every move the Lions have made since trying to find Prater’s replacement. That started with bringing aboard veteran Randy Bullock, who got a one-year, $1.5 million deal with half guaranteed. But when it was clear that wasn’t working out during training camp, and Zane Gonzalez and Matt Wright couldn’t seize the opportunity, the team was able to claim a promising young talent off waivers, Austin Seibert.
Fipp and the Lions thought they have found something in Seibert, especially when the kicker made 10 of his first 12 kicks to start last season, but a hip injury requiring surgery abruptly ended his season. Still, the team found another possible solution when forced to pivot, grabbing Riley Patterson off the Patriots practice squad. He finished out the season making 13 of 14 field goals, although never exhibiting the type leg strength offered by Prater and Seibert.
Patterson and Seibert went head-to-head in training camp and Fipp confirmed what everyone watching the practices could see: Seibert emerged as the clear winner in the competition. But again, three games into the season, residual issues related to his surgery cropped up, sidelining him again and restarting Detroit’s carousel.
“Everything was going great, so we were excited,” Fipp said. “We thought we kind of had the answer to the question, and then ultimately, Seibert didn’t feel good. He had some discomfort. I don’t know exactly how to say all that, but there’s a lot to that. He had some discomfort and didn’t feel great and wasn’t able to go.”
Since then, the Lions have rostered three kickers. They currently employ both Michael Badgley and Sam Ficken on the practice squad. Badgley was active for the team’s last game, a 29-0 loss to the Patriots, but didn’t appear in the contest after the Lions didn’t attempt a field goal, failed to score a touchdown and punter Jack Fox handled the lone kickoff.
As for Patterson, he’s largely repeated last year’s success as a member of the Jacksonville Jaguars, making 9 of 10 field goal attempts, with a long of 52 yards.
“It has not been ideal, but I think we’re on the right track, and we’ll keep working through it,” Fipp said. “The later you get in the season, the harder it gets to find somebody who can come in and play at a high level. The earlier that happens, the more choices you have.
“But I think overall, from our decision-making process and all that, I don’t regret or second-guess any of the moves we’ve made up to this point. And in hindsight, you would do some things differently, maybe, but we obviously don’t have the benefit of all the information. So, anyway, yeah, I don’t know. Hopefully it’ll settle down here.”
jdrogers@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @Justin_Rogers