Believe it or not, Greg Zuerlein is back as the New York Jets kicker.
Interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich announced the surprising news on Friday, December 27.
“It’s going to be Greg. Greg is going to kick for us [against the Buffalo Bills]. So he came back, looked healthy, kicked the ball well this week, so he will be our guy going forward here,” Ulbrich explained.
Zuerlein was placed on injured reserve ahead of the Week 9 Thursday Night Football game against the Houston Texans with a mysterious injury. Before being placed on IR, Zuerlein had struggled mightily. On the season he is 9-of-15 on his field goal attempts. Those six misses were the most in the NFL when he was placed on injured reserve.
Zuerlein Has One Last Chance to Save Jets Career
Candidly the Jets should have cut bait and moved on from Zuerlein. He showed signs in the offseason of not having the same stuff. That trickled into the regular season and cost the Jets multiple games.
By the time the team finally had the gonads to do something about it, the season was already lost. Instead of dumping Zuerlein, the team placed him on IR which put him on the shelf for a minimum of four games.
It was a tactic used by the team to allow Zuerlein to reset mentally with the chance to return later in the season.
The Jets handed Zuerlein a two-year deal for $8.4 million this offseason which included $4.2 million fully guaranteed. That was the largest contract the Jets had ever given out to a placekicker.