Ford Field in Detroit, site of the Rams’ NFC wild-card playoff loss to the Lions last season, would not rank as the friendliest place for an opposing team’s rookie kicker to make his NFL debut.
The Rams’ Joshua Karty embraces the challenge.
The sixth-round draft pick from Stanford is looking forward to the Sept. 8 opener against the Lions.
“Why not just jump straight into the deep end?” said Karty, who is charged with remedying the Rams’ woebegone kicking of 2023 . “I definitely like high-energy environments. It’s just a lot of fun.”
Rams coach Sean McVay mostly grimaced last season as kickers Brett Maher and Lucas Havrisik struggled. They made only nine of 15 field-goal attempts from 40 to 49 yards and only five of 10 from 50 yards or longer. The Rams 74.4% field-goal percentage ranked 30th among 32 teams.
Read more: Rams’ offense will be passable only if Kyren Williams and company stay in running
After studying Karty — he made 51 of 60 field-goal attempts at Stanford — general manager Les Snead selected him with the 209th pick in the draft.
In three preseason games, Karty made five of six field-goal attempts. He missed a 52-yard attempt against the Chargers, and missed an extra-point attempt against the Houston Texans.
Seven of his nine kickoffs resulted in touchbacks.
“Got a little bit of experience with everything,” he said. “That was kind of great. Use them all as learning experiences and move on.”
Karty is part of a specialists group that includes second-year punter Ethan Evans and long-snapper Alex Ward.
Last season, Evans averaged 49.2 yards and 39.1 net yards per punt. Ward played in 13 games before he was placed on injured reserve because of a neck injury.
With the NFL’s new kickoff rules, it remains to be seen how special teams coordinator Chase Blackburn will deploy Karty. Evans also can handle kickoffs.
As with presumably every NFL team, the Rams did not reveal their kickoff and kickoff-return strategies during the preseason.
Still, McVay liked what he saw in the kicking game.
“There’s been improvements that have been made,” McVay said. “I think we’ve gotten competitive opportunities and [I] want to see us consistently and continuously improve throughout the year. I do feel really good about our specialist situation.”
McVay said that running back Kyren Williams will return punts. Last season, before he established himself as the primary running back, Williams returned three punts for 21 yards and had five fair-catches.
“I get to make more plays,” Williams said. “And so I feel like I’m just going to be able to show everybody else what more I can do.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.