Almost immediately after Blair Walsh was released by the Minnesota Vikings in mid-November last year, nearly a full season after his horrific playoff miss against the Seattle Seahawks, he started fielding offers from other teams. But, as the kicker would later relay to friend and CBS analyst Jay Feely, there was something more attractive than an immediate paycheck.
A kicker, like a golfer, needs time to fix his swing.
“He didn’t want to be a stopgap solution, No. 1, but he also wanted to fix his mechanical problem,” Feely told me last month. “He spent some time [with a sports psychologist] and he knew he wanted to take some time, fix his problems and have enough time to practice those techniques before he went on a new team.