The New York Giants have wasted little time filling the void left behind by the pending release of kicker Aldrick Rosas.
Just a few hours upon word breaking of New York’s decision to cut ties with Rosas, the Giants have seemingly found his heir-apparent.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter has reported that New York will sign former New York Jets kicker Chandler Catanzaro to a one-year contract.
Giants are signing former Jets’ kicker Chandler Catanzaro to a one-year deal, per league source. He retired last August and was released from the Jets’ reserve/left squad list just last week. With the Giants releasing Aldrick Rosas today, Catanzaro steps in.
As Schefter notes above, Catanzaro appeared to be done with football at this time one year ago, retiring from the game in August of 2019. However, following his release from Gang Green’s reserve list just one week ago, the kicker has clearly backpedaled from that initial decision.
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Is Catanzaro an Upgrade Over Rosas?
Catanzaro kicked off his NFL career with the Arizona Cardinals as an undrafted free agent out of Clemson in 2014. Interestingly enough, to land the Cards’ starting kicker gig, Catanzaro had to beat out former Giants Pro Bowler, Jay Feely, which he did.
Catanzaro would go on to play all 48 regular-season games over the next three years with the Cardinals, hitting on at least 87.9% of his field goals in two of those three seasons.
However, Catanazaro’s once-promising career began to somewhat fizzle out from there. The kicker bounced around multiple teams from 2017 through 2018, including stints with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Carolina Panthers, and multiple stops with the New York Jets.
Barring Catanzaro blowing the team away in the first handful of days in training camp, the Giants are likely far from done in terms of addressing their kicker position. Catanzaro has missed 16 field goals over his previous three NFL seasons. Still, over his five-year career, he does hold a solid career field-goal percentage of 83.8%. That would prove to be a sizable improvement from Rosas, who has hit on more than 72% of his field goals just once in his three-year career.
Rosas’ dominant 2018 campaign led many to believe that the then-24-year-old was on the fast track to cementing himself amongst the upper-echelon of NFL kickers. That season Rosas made all but one of his 33 field goal attempts, with the lone miss coming on a bobbled snap.
In return, Rosas posted an absurd 97.0 field goal percentage, a meer 0.1% off of the league-lead (Robbie Gould 97.1%). Rosas’ brilliance culminated in what currently stands as his only Pro Bowl berth and All-Pro (2nd-team) selection, leading the team to re-sign Rosas as an exclusive rights free agent the pending offseason. However, the following year Rosas’ field goal percentage dropped by a massive 26.4% to just 70.6% in 2019.
Rosas is currently dealing with three misdemeanor charges stemming from an alleged hit-and-run accident back in June. Court records have also revealed that Rosas had a previous DUI back in 2016.
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Giants to Sign Ex-Jets Kicker to Replace Aldrick Rosas: Report