Giants' Kicking Competition Coming Down To Resilience

The New York Giants' placekicker battle is one of the most important competitions left at training camp.

First-year Giants special-teams coordinator Chris Horton gave an update on the battle between Ben Sauls and Dominic Zvada.

Sauls was 8 for 8 last season but lost his stranglehold on the job after struggling during minicamp. Horton said both kickers have been good in training camp, and neither is ahead at this point.

Ben Sauls, Dominic Zvada Competition Will Come Down to Who Is More Resilient

Sauls struggled under the heat of competing against Zvada and veteran Jason Sanders, but he's advanced to this point. Horton explained why rising to the challenge is crucial for both kickers.

"I always say if you're [uncomfortable] when you have competitions, you're going to sink," Horton said. "But when you have competition and you play hard and you're resilient, you're normally going to come out on the winning side of it, and a lot of these guys are embracing competition."

Chris Horton Has Found Solutions for Both Kickers

Zvada is an undrafted rookie who was the Big Ten kicker of the year in his junior year. He struggled last season at Michigan and had a hard time at points in the offseason, but Horton has helped him find solutions. Zvada has since shown off his big leg, making several kicks from 50-plus yards — including a 57-yarder — in practice.

"It was a lot of things," Horton said. "He talked about it being a lot of things, and then we just tried to find a ball. We tried to find an operation that fit him, and we changed a couple things, and then he's kicking the ball straight."

In OTAs and minicamp, Sauls was pushing kicks wide left. Head coach John Harbaugh and Horton found a fix that's made a big difference in training camp.

"Just watching Ben at the start … all his balls tailed off to the right because he's a lefty," Horton said. "It was a combination of how you hold the ball, the movement on the ball, where [holder] Jordan [Stout] should seat the ball, the kind of lean and all those things, so the ball matches up to the foot a little bit better.

"Since he left this spring, he left, he came back, and he's just hitting balls, straight balls, straight balls, and that's what we want to see, right? I mean, the guy kicked well last year. He was 8 for 8, so he kicked well."