The Untold Story of the NFL’s Most Mysterious Coaching Role Few Ever Notice

Shoutout to LLCHESTY, who asked an interesting question in the comment section of a previous article covering some potential special teams coordinator candidates to replace Rich Bisaccia, now that he’s left his post with the Green Bay Packers:

Hey Justis, do you know if any teams use a kicking coach? With the expansion of coaching staffs it’s kind of surprising they all don’t.

Well, let’s try to answer that today.

The Washington Post already tackled this subject in an article that they wrote in 2024, which included this from then-former long-time special teams coach Kevin O’Dea, who spent north of two decades in the league before resurfacing as the New York Jets’ assistant special teams coach in 2025:

“When you think about it, those were like $40 [million] to $50 million kicks,” said O’Dea, who last coached in the NFL in 2018. He was factoring in all of those coaching salaries but probably underselling the bump in revenue and future ticket sales from an unexpected playoff appearance. “Some of these staffs have 30 coaches now, and we’ve got two or three linebackers coaches and two quarterbacks coaches, but there aren’t many true kicking coaches in the league. How many games come down to a 42-yard field goal? But when you ask people if they are interested in hiring a kicking consultant, it always comes down to the cha-ching. No one wants to spend for it.”

O’Dea might know what he’s talking about, as the Jets led the NFL in special teams DVOA last season, in what was really just a two-team race between them and the Seattle Seahawks.

As I’ve stated previously here at APC, few coaches in the league really want to reinvent a kicker from the ground up. They’ll give notes on strike points (basically what amounts to a “you missed that one” as far as feedback goes) and trajectory (“that one could have been blocked”), but there aren’t many true specialist coaches in the league as much as there are guys with stopwatches. Because of that, it’s common for kickers to have their own kicking coaches (which they pay for), and they receive feedback from them weekly.

Here’s what the Washington Post had to say about this phenomenon:

Some special teams coordinators feel threatened by their presence, believing they should be the expert on kicking even if their background is more on coverages and X’s and O’s. And some kickers themselves can be skeptical of outside voices; they work in the offseason with their personal gurus, in some cases since middle school. Problem is, those gurus aren’t on the sideline to help them in real time on game day.

Now it’s time to answer the question: How few of these kicking specialists are there around the league?