Place kickers aren’t a hot commodity in the NFL draft.
Since 1991, 41 place kickers have been taken in the draft. Of those, 12 are starting for one of the 32 teams in the league. The oldest starting place kicker in the NFL is John Kasay, who was drafted by Seattle in 1991 and now plays for Carolina.
“It’s only seven rounds of the draft,” said NFL draft analyst Mike Detillier. “You are trying to fill in other needs . . . so, I’d say any year you have somewhere from two to five specialists picked.”
But former LSU kicker Colt David will be putting his name onto the big board for Saturday’s NFL draft to test the waters.
Detillier said David has a good chance to play in the league down the line, but he probably won’t kick his rookie year.
Detillier said the top three kickers on his board are David Buehler (USC), Jose Martinez (UTEP) and Patrick McAfee (West Virginia). He said David is No. 11 on his list.
LSU junior kicker Josh Jasper, who heads into the 2009 season as David’s replacement, said he and David are close friends, and he has talked to David about the draft.
“I try not to bring it up all the time, but I’m curious,” Jasper said. “He says he wants to be a free agent.”
Detillier said around 22 NFL teams will sign kickers this season, so David will be able to go to an NFL camp for an opportunity to make a team.
“Most of the guys are signed as undrafted free agents,” Detillier said. “Even if you have a veteran kicker, you want to bring a young kicker into camp, so you most of the time get brought in as an undrafted free agent.”
Sebastian Janikowski is the only kicker still in the league who was taken in the first round. He was drafted 17th overall by Oakland in 2000.
Two kickers were taken in last year’s draft — Taylor Mehlhaff in the sixth round (178th overall) by New Orleans and Brandon Coutu in the seventh round (235th overall) by Seattle.
Both Mehlaff and Coutu are not starters in the league. Undrafted free agent Garrett Hartley from Oklahoma replaced Mehlaff during last season.
Detillier said David has two major knocks against him – size and leg strength.
David stands at 5-foot-8 7/8-inches and 166 pounds and is the third shortest of the 27 kickers entering their name into the draft.
But David has a few positives that give him a leg up on the rest of the kickers. One of those attributes is David’s accuracy — he was 201-for-204 in his career in PATs and 36-for-41 inside 40 yards.
“He’s a very accurate kicker inside of 45 yards,” Detillier said. “He’s gotten stronger, so his range has gotten a little better from beyond that.”
David’s other positive attribute is his ability to handle pressure.
Jasper said David taught him how to ignore outside distractions to handle a pressure situation on the road.
“When you go to places like Tennessee or the Swamp [in Florida], he’d just tell me to zone everything out and not think about anything, not even think about the kick, but just go in there and do what you’re taught to do,” Jasper said.
Detillier said David’s ability to handle the pressure is going to help him in the NFL.
“Some guys have not been put in a situation to kick under pressure,” Detillier said. “It’s the big question mark with the top kicker in this draft class, David Buehler. [USC was] winning so many games big that they didn’t need him to kick in a big game situation.”
 
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