Greg Joseph Has Leg Up in Giants’ ‘Kicking Competition’

New York Giants kicker Graham Gano is on injured reserve after injuring his hamstring last week, and the team signed veteran Greg Joseph to fill the roster spot.

But according to special teams coordinator Micahel Ghobrial, they have not necessarily ruled out Jude McAtameny, who is currently on the practice squad, as the kicker of choice for Sunday.

“[Joseph] showed up a couple days ago, and we have him and (kicker) Jude (McAtamney) competing for that kicker spot. It’s going be a good competition,” Ghobrial said. 

“Obviously, what Greg brings to the table is a veteran guy that’s kicked in multiple stadiums and that has had a good percentage throughout his career. And Jude (McAtamney) has shown a very promising preseason and has obviously done a good job in the off-season and training camp and all his opportunities in practice. So, we’ll have a better idea of who becomes our kicker on Sunday as we get closer to that day.”

For a Giants team that needs to find its first win, it doesn’t take a football savant to realize that Joseph, with his NFL experience, gives the team the best chance of success. That’s not a knock against McAtamney, but after kicking field goals in his first season at Rutgers, he was reduced to handling field goals, making it fair to question his experience in big-moment situations.

That’s not an issue for Joseph, who famously kicked a 60-yard game-winning field goal against the Giants in 2022 as a member of the Vikings.

“Obviously with it being a weathered stadium, I think the experience is always very helpful,” Ghobrial said of Joseph. 

“His knowledge of different stadiums and how the wind plays in each of them is really, really cool. I started talking to him a little bit more about it and you understand kind of the way his mind works, depending on which way we’re kicking and what are the tendencies of that. So that experience certainly helps.”

The Giants no doubt hope to avoid a repeat of last year’s fiasco at kicker when they cycled through five different kickers after Gano landed on IR with season-ending knee surgery.