Patriots’ Chad Ryland and Joey Slye prepare for training camp competition at kicker

Last year, the Patriots selected a kicker, Chad Ryland, in the fourth round of the draft. The results were not good: Ryland made just 16 of his 25 field goal attempts and New England finished last in the NFL with a 64.0% field goal success rate.

This offseason, the Patriots signed veteran kicker Joey Slye, and Patriots.com reports that Ryland and Slye will have a real boot camp competition with both having a real chance of winning the job and the one who performs better will be approved.

In minicamp, Slye was the more accurate of the two, but that’s not saying much. Last year, Slye kicked for the Commanders, making 19 of his 24 field goal attempts and ranking 29th out of 32 NFL teams in field goal accuracy. Slye also has a career extra point rate of just 88.5 percent, which ranks last among kickers with at least 100 extra point attempts since Slye entered the NFL in 2019.

The bottom line is that the Patriots have two kickers on the roster, neither of whom have proven themselves worthy of counting. They hope one of them proves his worth in training camp.