Wk 07 ~ Colts ~ Discussion, Pressers, News, etc

Bradley from Dayton
Bradley has a tendency to get a little worked up during football games — to the point where his husband leaves the house to allow him space to stress-watch — but he’s only been brought to tears one time during a Vikings game: When Gary Anderson missed wide left.

Bradley, who grew up in Blaine, Minnesota, promises that he’s only fatalistic during the games and the rest of the time he’s an optimist, especially when Reichard is lining up for a field goal.

One of the reasons that he isn’t freaking during field-goal attempts is because of Reichard’s background. He loves the fact that Reichard went to Alabama despite their previous bad history with kickers.

“He wanted to break the curse, which to me on an 18 year old, that is some balls that just don’t exist. That just don’t exist,” Bradley said. “I don’t know how you say to yourself, ‘you know what, I’m going to go break this curse.’ In a world where the youth seems to want to make everything easy on themselves, he decided to take the path of most resistance.”

Reichard indeed broke the curse in college. In 2023, he set the record for most points ever scored in the SEC and hit a 52-yard field goal late in the game against Michigan in the college football playoff. He was also a two-time All-American.

Bradley, who is well-read on everything Vikings, saw a Star Tribune article that noted Reichard works with multiple different kicking coaches trying to perfect his kicks. He loved that.

“I think [Reichard] is just somebody who is trying to hone their craft and they’re not worried about the outside noise,” Bradley said.

One thing I’ve noticed when talking to fans about Reichard is that many tie in their own life experiences to their trust in Reichard.

Bradley is a competitor and played many hours of foosball growing up and he battles coworkers at table tennis as an adult. He is a headcase. A choke artist. He can’t handle the pressure.

“As soon as I would get in my own head, even though I was amazing at it, I ended up letting somebody come back into the game,” Bradley said. “I think there’s just some people, [Reichard] included, that just seem to be built differently. It’s like golfers too. You have all the pressure in the world and there’s just some that are so much better than others.”

There’s another part of his trust for Reichard that seems trivial but makes sense: His mis-kicks go in. In the muck against the Bears, Reichard was a bit off to the right and his kick ended up glancing in off the post. Bradley thought one of his kicks against the Saints was going left and then it drifted right back through the posts.

“I think I laughed because I was like…even when the guy misses, he makes it,” he said. “I just shake my head. I’m not a jersey guy, but like the couple of people who had posted with the jerseys, it was like, you do that. That is great.”

Bradley is not a believer in jinxes. He doesn’t care if Reichard misses one before the playoffs. He doesn’t think talking about the kicker’s pristine record will throw something off cosmically. He doesn’t leave the room anymore when Reichard kicks.

However, were the Vikings’ star kicker to line up for a game winner in the playoffs…

“I’ll be honest, I’d be on the ground praying sort of miracle,” Bradley said. “I think the funny thing is, we’re as nervous as we are but he doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to that, which is exactly what you want.”

Rick in Buffalo

Rick is the most skeptical of all of the fans I spoke with but he feels a little better knowing that Reichard has support. The kicker gets blamed for 100% of the results but Rick has been thinking about the other things that play into success or failure.

“There’s like four different things that could go sideways here,” Rick points out, referring to bad snaps, bad holds, opponents blocking kicks and whatever else could transpire aside from foot-to-ball.

The Vikings have the best long snapper in the NFL in Andrew DePaola. He is a two-time first-team All-Pro and hasn’t had a miscue since joining the team in 2020. The current holder, punter Brett Thorson, didn’t hold in college but did a good enough job in training camp that the team trusted him with its valuable merchandise. Not to mention special teams coach Matt Daniels has worked very closely with Reichard and Kevin O’Connell is very positive and supportive toward his kickers, unlike his predecessor.

Knowing that the operation is sound helps with a distrust of kickers that was formed in the upstairs bedroom of his parents’ house. Rick was 13 when he watched Gary Anderson miss wide left. He started punching the floor until his mom came up to remind him that wasn’t particularly productive behavior.

That miss was tough for Rick because he was just finding his love for football. While he was in the heart of Bills country, his fandom bounced around until one particular player changed everything for him: Randy Moss.

Nobody in the history of the NFL had played like Moss. As soon as Sega Dreamcast came out with the game NFL2K, Rick crushed all of his friends by throwing bombs from Daunte Culpepper to Moss.

He feels a little differently about Walsh’s miss vs. Anderson’s gaffe. While the Vikings lost on that kick, the final score was 10-9. Rick grumbles about the Vikings allowing Russell Wilson to run around and find a completion for a first down. His point is that they could have done a lot of other things in the game rather than bringing it down to another field goal.

In that same vein, Rick’s answer to the question of a late-game 50-yard field goal was that he hopes they go for fourth down rather than putting it on the foot of the kicker.

Maybe I should have been more specific about the circumstances of the hypothetical but nonetheless Rick came around to saying that he is “fine” with it if Reichard has to attempt a game-ending kick.

He is, however, on the side of wanting him to miss before the postseason.

“I don’t want it to hang it over every kick where you have to hear, ‘he hasn’t missed since blah blah blah blah,’” Rick said. “Just miss one get it over with.”

I did find a couple examples of a kicker being perfect in the regular season and nails in the playoffs. Green Bay’s Mason Crosby went unscathed in the 2020 season and then 4-for-4 in the playoffs, though none of his postseason kicks were from beyond 40 yards. Indy’s Mike Vanderjagt went 37-for-37 in 2003 and 3-for-3 in the playoffs. Maybe he’s not the best example though.

Anyway, Rick said that he sees Reichard as being resilient. He was impressed the way that he attempted to play through his injury in 2024 and may have come back a bit earlier than needed.

He also has a bit of a personal chip on his shoulder about the league-wide media not giving Reichard enough credit.

“If the rest of the league could perhaps catch up and understand [Reichard’s greatness] as opposed t talking about the kicker in Dallas all the time,” Rick said. “He’s good in his own right, but not as good. He seems to be overshadowing [Reichard], and no one seems to appreciate Will. That’s fine. The less attention, the better.”

And while he isn’t quite ready to declare total confidence in a 50-yarder in the playoffs, he doesn’t want that to come across as not being happy with Reichard’s performance.

“It’s definitely positive,” Rick said. “I’d much rather be here than the rotating band of misfits that the Rams, who are bringing in.”

Truth.

Still, years of anxiousness have brought Rick into a state of acceptance that Reichard may not be infallible.

“If another shank happens in the playoffs, that’s the Vikings,” he said.

Ben from Florida

Ben believes in curses. He also believes that curses can be broken.

When it comes to Reichard, there’s something he keeps coming back to: Alabama had a curse too.

“I looked up Alabama’s kicking history and it was really bleak, especially when Nick Saban started, they were winning championships and couldn’t kick to save their life,” Ben said. “He went there and it instantly flipped. They had the most consistent kicking and the all-time NCAA scorer. I think it was pure destiny that an NFL franchise that has a horrible kicking history drafted him and he’s changing the trajectory of it.”

Ben, who has been a fan since Moss arrived, has further logic to his premise that Reichard is the one who can buck history. He argues that Reichard has been around long enough to show that a meltdown is never on the way. After all, he’s 62-of-72 field goals and 77-of-77 extra points. That means he’s put foot to football 139 times and made 129 and most of the misses were impacted by his injury in 2024 or a TV wire in 2025.

“I feel like if he was going to shank a kick or get the yips, it would have happened by now”

Admittedly, you won’t find anyone higher on Reichard than Ben, no matter how much you love him. Ben is crafting a league MVP case for Reichard. He thinks that the Vikings’ kicker might be more popular in Minnesota than Justin Jefferson right now.

Respect the enthusiasm, folks.

Like the other fans, Ben was inspired by Reichard’s fearlessness when it came to mixing it up with Saints players.

“I’m like, you do not see that from a kicker, kicking is something that you have to be mentally built for and he’s built for it,” he said.

And there’s something about the way the actual kicks look that makes Reichard different in his eyes.

“My favorite thing about him is that he’s a perfectionist,” Ben said. “Every single kick goes directly down the middle of the goal posts. Also during his rookie year when he got hurt, he tried to kick through it. I’m like, he’s built mentally like a football player.”

So Ben must be the most confident person in the world if the playoffs come down to Reichard, right?

“The way he carries himself, I think he does away with the kicking curse of the Minnesota Vikings,” Ben said. “But…in the back of my mind I’ll never get it out of my head until he kicks the game winner in the NFC Championship game.”

This has been the most "special teams are the third phase of the game" season ever

— Matthew Coller (@MatthewColler) October 20, 2026

Potential game of the year? pic.twitter.com/0fOqynb9uW

— VikingzFanPage (@vikingzfanpage) October 20, 2026

Kyler Murray is making $38.1M this season. The #Vikings are only paying him $1.3M of that. The #Cardinals are paying the rest. pic.twitter.com/qAjCGMTmeM

— VikingzFanPage (@vikingzfanpage) October 20, 2026

It isn’t being ruled out that the #Vikings look to acquire #Colts RB Jonathan Taylor, per @alec_lewis. It certainly sounds like Minnesota will at least call on his availability:

“Cannot rule anything out, but it really depends on what the asking price ends up being” pic.twitter.com/WcYbWfieOS

— VikingzFanPage (@vikingzfanpage) October 19, 2026

KOC better be preaching no peeking ahead to that 49'er game...