Nightshade
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Saints PK Wil Lutz had 'probably the best kicking workout' Sean Payton has seen | NOLA.com"We brought him in for a workout, and it's probably the best kicking workout I've ever seen," coach Sean Payton said on a teleconference Wednesday morning.
Still, on the heels of a recommendation from Ravens coach John Harbaugh, among others, the Saints worked out Lutz on Monday. "(Lutz's) workout was outstanding, and the thing that I told Kai, our plan after these guys had kind of competed all during training camp was to pick a kicker and go with it," Payton said. "And we felt Kai had done a great job. We certainly weren't looking to replace that kicker. We knew Baltimore had a pretty good young, talented player. I'd heard that from coach Harbaugh, and a few of their staff members had talked about this young player that they had at camp.
Lutz, 22, went undrafted out of Georgia State this year, and even though he signed with the Ravens, he didn't have a realistic chance to unseat Justin Tucker in Baltimore.
"I just thought the velocity, the accuracy; we weren't bringing in a kicker on that workout day looking to replace a guy that we felt real comfortable with," Payton said. "It's pretty common for us to have guys come in here at the beginning of the season and work out, and the way it came off his foot, his leg strength — every element to it. And when it was over with — so we saw X number of field goals, X number of kickoffs, deep kickoffs (and) short — I looked at (director of pro scouting) Terry (Fontenot) and everyone else that was at the workout. I said, 'Have we seen anything like that?'


This explains a lot why the change was made. Seems to have a ton of upside and could be our kicker for the next decade or more.