Dan Salomone: We have a good old-fashioned kicker competition on our hands, and undrafted rookie Dominic Zvada is part of it. The former Michigan All-American and 2024 Big Ten Kicker of the Year showed his leg strength in windy conditions on Friday at the Quest Diagnostics Training Center.
“Really talented,” said Harbaugh, who earned his stripes in the NFL as a special teams coordinator. “He’s big, tall, rangy kind of guy. Big for a kicker, you would say, and really strong leg. More than anything, it’s the consistency. He has a vertical swing pattern, we call it. He does a nice job of getting downfield through the kick. Because of that, he tends to kick a ball straight consistently. If you do that, you probably have a chance. It’s like your drive, right? When you hit it straight down the middle consistently, you have a good round.”
The Giants have a new kicking battery this year. Over the offseason, they signed kicker Jason Sanders and punter/holder Jordan Stout, who have been first-team All-Pros in their careers. They also added two long snappers in Super Bowl LV champion Zach Triner and undrafted rookie Ben Mann, who is the grandson of Chuck Mercein, a fullback drafted by the Giants in 1965.
The only returnee is Ben Sauls, who made all eight of his field goal attempts and seven extra points in the final three games of last season.
“It’s going to be a competition, for sure, right out of the gate,” Harbaugh said. “It’s already started. You saw Zvada. That was his first iteration of that competition. We’re coming next week. We’ll be kicking field goals. We go to OTAs, we’ll kick field goals I think every other practice, but we may be kicking them every practice because we have three guys to kick. We’ll just see how it shakes out.”
Over the course of Harbaugh’s 18 seasons in Baltimore, the Ravens were No. 1 in the NFL in field goal percentage (86.9), makes (552), and attempts (635). It will be a major part of the formula for the new-look Giants.