By: JJ Lanier

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

If defense wins championships and offense puts butts in the seats, what does special teams do?

Oftentimes the difference in winning and losing isn’t all that exciting. It could be your team showing discipline and not shooting themselves in the foot with stupid penalties.  Or maybe it’s just being “fundamentally sound”; a coach’s favorite catchphrase.

More times than not it’s the difference between the place kicker consistently connecting on a 45-yard field goal and kicking like how your uncle throws darts, five beers into a six pack.

For the past nine years that’s an area fans of the Atlanta Falcons haven’t had to worry about, thanks to Matt Bryant.

Now, before I go on I completely understand that reading about the accomplishments of a kicker isn’t nearly as engaging as reading about Matt Ryan or Julio Jones but that doesn’t mean his contributions aren’t valuable.

In Bryant’s case, he has played a huge part in Atlanta’s success and basically been about as good, if not better, at his position than anyone else on the team.

Excluding the 2009 season when Bryant was brought in to replace Jason Elam over the last five games, he has converted just under 89% of his field goal attempts since joining the Falcons.

I feel pretty confident saying that if you were told at the beginning of the season your place kicker was guaranteed to hit 90% of their field goal attempts you’d take it and not think twice.

Plus, he’s only failed to convert on one extra point attempt, out of 330, over that same time frame.

Normally I wouldn’t put too much stock into extra points but since the NFL moved the distance back on those attempts in 2015, Bryant’s numbers are pretty impressive.

He signed a three-year extension this offseason and based on the last few years, even at the age of 43, he doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

In 2016, arguably the best year of Bryant’s career, he led the NFL in scoring, received his first Pro Bowl invite and surpassed Morten Andersen as the Falcons all-time leading scorer.

Place Kickers are kind of viewed like children were a hundred years ago; they are to be seen, but not heard. If they’re doing their job they go largely unnoticed, except for game winning field goals.

If they’re not, they suddenly become the “drunk, idiot kicker” whose position needs to be eliminated because they’re ruining the game.

Over the course of the upcoming season most of the success, or failure, will be placed on the shoulders of guys like Matt Ryan, Devonta Freeman, and Vic Beasley. And don’t get me wrong, that’s the way it should be; those guys are more instrumental in a team’s success than a punter or place kicker.