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Raiders Fan Favorite Hanging Onto Roster Spot by a Thread Amid Ugly Preseason
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- Raiders Fan Favorite Hanging Onto Roster Spot by a Thread Amid Ugly Preseason
AJ Cole with Kansei Matsuzawa. Getty
The Las Vegas Raiders have plenty of positional battles in training camp, but there is one that has been pretty one-sided from the get-go. The team decided to move on from former All-Pro Daniel Carlson this offseason.
They signed Matt Gay in free agency to replace him, but also brought in undrafted rookie Kansei Matsuzawa to compete with him. The "Tokyo Toe," which is what fans have called Matsuzawa since college, quickly became a fan favorite.
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There has never been a Japanese-born player to play a regular-season game in the NFL. There is no shortage of people rooting for Matsuzawa. Unfortunately, things haven't been pretty.
He missed a 38-yard field goal attempt against the Houston Texans. Before that, he missed a lot of kicks in training camp and even hit a kickoff out of bounds against the Arizona Cardinals.
The Raiders can't risk having such inconsistency at kicker. Gay isn't one of the top kickers in the NFL, but he's a former Pro Bowler who can at least hit mid-range attempts easily.
At this point, Matsuzawa is barely hanging onto a roster spot. Gay will be the Raiders' kicker this season unless they decide to sign someone else. Matsuzawa's only hope of making the Raiders is if they get an International Player Pathway exemption for him and place him on the practice squad. If that doesn't happen, his NFL dreams may be over before they ever really got started.
Could Raiders Bring Back Daniel Carlson?
Gay hasn't been particularly impressive this offseason, either. He's worked with Raiders special teams coordinator Joe DeCamillis in the past, so that could keep him safe for this year.
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If Gay has any obvious struggles, the Raiders could consider bringing back Carlson. He's still a free agent, and while he wasn't perfect last year, his 81.5% field goal percentage from last season was better than Gay's 73.9%.
Klint Kubiak Talks Penalties
A big concern for the Raiders has to be the amount of penalties they've committed in the preseason. They committed eight penalties for 75 yards in the opener and then another nine penalties for 63 yards against the Texans.
The Raiders don't have the talent yet to overcome so many penalties. Head coach Klint Kubiak is not happy with the amount of penalties thus far.
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"I know [those are] things that we coach them on every day, but we do have a lot of young guys that you can't take anything for granted," Kubiak told reporters . "So, we put it on ourselves as coaches, number one, with how we educate them, what we're practicing, what we're drilling, and it's on us, as coaches, to get it fixed. I don't know if I've seen that many special teams penalties in a game, and you look at the guys that are committing these penalties and these are some younger guys, and it's not acceptable. We have to get it fixed defensively. We get a stop on third down, we taunt a guy and let them stay on the field. Unacceptable. One was a face mask defensively. It's two weeks in a row that, as a coaching staff, we've got substitution penalties. Unacceptable."
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