Greg Joseph will not be with the Vikings in 2024, but he will remain in the NFC North. The veteran kicker has agreed to a deal with the Packers, agent Brett Tessler announced.
Joseph will earn up to $1.295M on this one-year contract, Ian Rapoport of NFL Network reports. As Tessler notes, the 29-year-old drew interest from other teams, but he preferred to join Green Bay. Joseph will serve as veteran competition with Anders Carlson this offseason.
The latter took over from Mason Crosby as a rookie in 2023. Carlson posted a 90.9% success rate in 2020, but his Auburn career ended with two straight seasons of much lower accuracy. In spite of that, the Packers entered the year with confidence in the 25-year-old.
Carlson connected on 27 of 33 field goal attempts in the regular season, good for an accuracy rate of 81.8%. That included four misses from a range of between 40-49 yards, and he also missed five extra points. During the team’s postseason run, the former sixth-rounder went two-for-three on field goals and converted seven of eight extra points.
Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst offered public support for Carlson in the summer, but after a full campaign of evaluation the team has added a more experienced option in the kicking game. Joseph handled full-time duties in Minnesota for each of the past three seasons. Over that time, he converted 82.2% of field goal kicks (including a career-best accuracy rate of 86.8% in 2021). Joseph went 112-for-124 on extra point attempts during his Vikings tenure, which is in line with his career average in that respect.
The former UDFA (who previously played for the Browns and Titans) also led the league in touchback percentage during the 2021 season, as Tessler adds. That will become more of a moot point in 2024 compared to past campaigns given the new kickoff rules, but Joseph’s consistency could give him an advantage after Carlson endured an up-and-down rookie campaign. The Packers will be among the teams partaking in a kicking competition this summer.
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