Vikings Reveal Reason Why a Key Viking Succumbed to Injury
The 2024 NFL Draft involved Minnesota scooping up kicker Will Reichard. Very quickly, the rookie established himself as a key Viking.
His NFL career got off to a blazing start, consistently drilling kicks with ease across the opening several weeks of the season. He did, however, encounter a hurdle toward the middle of the season, missing some field goals before then heading to the IR. In June, special teams coordinator Matt Daniels clarified how he understands the injury.
Key Viking Will Reichard & The 2024 IR Placement
How much football is too much football?
In baseball, a pitcher can get tasked with too heavy of a workload. There can be exceptions — one thinks of a pitcher digging deep in the World Series, for instance, by making himself available for bullpen duty shortly after a start — but the general rule is that rest is needed, wise, and beneficial.
So, too, does a kicker need a certain amount of rest. At least that’s what Coach Daniels thinks.
Reichard needed to hit the IR at least partly due to the amount of work he took on in 2024.
“Me as a coach, really having a rookie kicker last year,” Daniels began, “a guy who played into the [college] playoffs, went to the Senior Bowl, went to The Combine, and then he had a Pro Day. You really looked at, I mean this guy basically played eleven straight months of football without a break.”
Daniels went on: “Obviously he ended up having the quad injury that took place, right around the middle of the season, and that was probably due to over-kicking. Overexertion, really.”
Daniels then explains how the team is looking to get better at both kickoffs and field goals. Or, in other words, the most prominent parts of a kicker’s job description. One thinks of extra points as being another crucial factor, but Will Reichard drilled each one last season, making it hard to improve.
By the time the season ended, Will Reichard had drilled 24 of his 30 field goal attempts. That’s an 80% conversion rate. Not disastrous, but far from the top-end for NFL kickers (the NFL boasted ten qualifying kickers who were above 90%; a pair even got past the 95% threshold).
He’ll be looking to push his percentage quite a bit higher, something he can do by converting more of his kicks from distance. Reichard has plenty of leg strength; accuracy, not distance, was the issue. He went 5/7 on kicks from 40-49 yards and then 8/11 on kicks from 50+.
Curious minds may be interested to note that his season-long kick was from 58 yards.
At present, Will Reichard is working through an offseason competition that … doesn’t have any direct competition. He’s the lone kicker on the roster, making him the obvious favorite to begin the season as the KR1.
Reichard, 24, is carrying a $1,002,655 cap charge into the season, meaning he’s offering the team tremendous value.
Editor’s Note: Information from Pro Football Reference and Over the Cap helped with this piece.
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