Will Reichard has Vikings fans rethinking their view on kickers

Purple Insider spoke with a bunch of fans during the bye week about why they trust Reichard

Photo courtesy Minnesota Vikings

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By Matthew Coller

Since the beginning of 2025, Minnesota Vikings kicker Will Reichard has made 48 of 50 field goals. Out of those makes, 18 of them have come from 50+ yards and this year he’s averaging 10.6 points per game.

Against the Chicago Bears, he made a kick in the rain to put the Vikings up six points, which forced the Bears to aim for a touchdown with backup Tyson Bagent in the game. Against the Saints, he put the game on ice with a 50+ kick to put the Vikings up by 10.

Vikings fans have an unfortunate relationship with kickers because two of the biggest disappointments in the team’s history have involved kicking. Yet there has been a noticeable shift in fans’ attitude toward the craft during Reichard’s time in purple. You see Reichard jerseys at US Bank Stadium. Fans turn him into memes every week — in a good way — because of his innocent look and stone cold mentality.

Simply put: Vikings fans have a kicker they can wrap their arms around and believe in despite their trauma.

Why is Reichard so different in their eyes? They have had a number of quality kickers in the past and none have received the benefit of the doubt like him.

In order to find out, I called seven Vikings fans who are enamoured with Reichard to find out why they see him as the kicker who has changed everything.

Here are their stories…

Drew from Iowa

As a 42-year old Vikings fan, Drew is the perfect age to have Gary Anderson’s missed kick in the NFC Championship game hurt the most. He was just old enough to still believe in magic and not old enough yet to be jaded by *gestures at everything*.

“They had never been a real championship contender in my life until then and when you’re 14 years old, you think it’s going to happen,” Drew said. “That was the first crushing disappointment that I had.”

Drew went to games at the Metrodome with his grandfather when he was growing up. His dad is a Packers fan, though he still felt bad for his 14-year-old kid when Anderson’s boot drifted wide to the left.

Years later, Drew found himself inside TCF Stadium for the Vikings’ playoff game against the Seattle Seahawks. It was a badge of honor to have been there for one of the coldest games of all time and when Teddy Bridgewater found Kyle Rudolph on a pass over the middle that put the Vikings in field goal range, he thought he’d be telling the tale of Vikings victory for many years to come.

“It was definitely going to be like one of those like mountaintop fan experiences because it was so cold….like you really like have your fan badge on that you endured that and it was going to be a win until it wasn’t,” Drew said.

Drew recalls the disbelief of Vikings fans leaving the stadium that day.

“One of the real memories of that day is walking back to the car after the game and everybody was coping with it in a different way,” Drew said. “Like every like 15 seconds, you’d like hear somebody else just go, ‘I can’t believe you missed that!’ Everybody was just like processing it like out loud, whether it was you with your friend or you’d hear other groups of people just like, just cursing them out.”

That’s enough of a traumatic experience to feel sketchy about kickers, especially since Walsh went 34-for-39 in 2015.

But Drew is all-in on Will Reichard.

The first part of his explanation is that he doesn’t buy into the idea that there are spooky forces at play that cause Vikings kicks to go wide to the left.

“I know I’m a Vikings fan, so I should believe curses exist,” Drew said. “But at some point, it has to be different. I think that’s part of the point of being a fan is you’ve got to have that belief that it’s going to be different at some point in time was otherwise, what are we doing here? Like why, why would we cheer for something that we don’t think is ultimately going to pay off at some point in time?”

Beyond Drew talking himself out of the kicker boogeyman existing, he sees something in Reichard that didn’t exist for previous kickers.

“Will’s different,” Drew said. “He just seems to be on a different planet. It feels like you truly have the best kicker in the league and the best kicker, maybe ever. It’s not like he’s scraping the crossbar, [the kicks] are straight down the middle for the most part and carrying the crossbar by 10 to 15 yards every time. He just seems like a... Almost like a robot out there.”

While Reichard is indeed a real person, his consistency is machine-like. He’s made 24-of-29 kicks from 50+ yards in his career and he’s 48-of-50 in the last two years. One of those misses (probably) hit a TV cable and the other was in a hurry-up situation where they couldn’t sub in the K-ball.

For Drew, it’s not just the results of Reichard’s kicks, it’s his demeanor as well.

“He never looks anxious,” Drew said. “He just sort of has this very relaxed manner about him and very matter-of-fact. I feel like that plays into it.”

Drew points out that in postgame locker room videos, Reichard has little-to-no reaction to getting game balls from Kevin O’Connell. He expects to be this good, Drew surmises.

“The way he carries himself on the field, and even the other day when he kind of was mixing it up on the field a little bit, he gives you that perception of, ‘hey, I’m a football player, not a kicker and he carries himself with that confidence,” Drew said.

Now for the ultimate test: If the Vikings need a game-winning kick from long range in the playoffs this year, how will Drew be feeling?

“We’re going to win,” he said.

Ryan from California

Ryan grew up in Minnesota, went to the University of Minnesota and lived in Minnesota until about 12 years ago when he moved to California. At 51, he’s old enough to have gone to games as a kid with his dad at The Met. He was in college when Randy Moss and Randall Cunningham took the NFL by storm.

Right before Gary Anderson lined up for his infamous miss in the NFC Championship game, Ryan remembers hearing broadcaster Pat Summerall say that Anderson hadn’t missed all year. He looked over at his college roommate and said, “he just jinxed us.”

Standing on his couch for the kick, Ryan collapsed to his knees when it floated just beyond the post.

“There’s moments in your life where something’s just ingrained in in your memory and I have that with that moment,” Ryan said. “I can never get it out of my head.”

Blair Walsh’s miss had a bit more levity involved for Ryan but it was just as memorable.

It happened on the same day as his daughter’s birthday. As Walsh was lining up to kick the ball, he was hanging streamers.

“He hooked it wide left, and I was like, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me!’” Ryan said. “My wife’s like, ‘Ryan, it’s your daughter’s birthday, don’t let this wreck her party.’ I was so devastated.”

Luckily the miss did not ruin his daughter’s birthday or her love for football. Both of Ryan’s daughters are Vikings fans and his 20-year-old asked him last week if she should get a Will Reichard jersey. Naturally, at 20, she was inspired by a Reichard meme involving his scuffle with the Saints after a made field goal.

“His personality is it’s different, man,” Ryan said. “He’s very, very quiet and he definitely looks like an eighth grader, but also he’s super, super competitive.”

Because of the team’s past problems with kicking, which extend to Daniel Carlson’s memorable “did you see the game” miscues in Green Bay and Dan Bailey’s meltdown in Tampa Bay in 2020, Ryan and his kids always say, “don’t miss!” before every Vikings kick. But over the last two years, their tradition has changed.

“Now we don’t even say that,” Ryan said. “We look at each other and we say, ‘he’s got this.’”

For the record, Ryan and his daughters are still doing their Caddyshack-inspired jinx fingers for opposing kickers. They want to maintain some control over the game.

Ryan and his family aren’t totally superstitious — maybe only a little stitious — but he does want Reichard to miss one field goal before the playoffs.

“It’s one of those things you almost kind of hope he misses one so that he doesn’t go into the playoffs with a streak,” he said.

No matter if Reichard has missed one or not, Ryan and his kids have more confidence in Reichard than any other Vikings kicker who has come along because of his demeanor.

“You feel kind of safe with his confidence, right?” Ryan said. “Where some of the other kickers you could tell were a little squirrely about the moment and you’d feel nervous as an audience or a fan. You’d feel nervous for them. Whereas when Will walks out, he’s just kind of like, everybody calm down, I’m here, I’ve got this.”

Ryan compares Reichard’s calmness to a golfer making putts with all the pressure on them, alone out there on the green.

What about the scenario of the Vikings needing a game-winning kick in the playoffs?

“I’m going to have, to be totally honest with you, I’m going to have a little bit of nerves about our history, but I feel a lot more confident than I have in any of those previous kickers,” Ryan said. “I just feel like he’s a different cat altogether than those guys. So, yes, I would be nervous just because as a Vikings fan for 40 years, it’s been tough. But I would feel good about it.”

John from New York

John was in eighth grade when Gary Anderson missed. He was in his parents’ home in Rochester, Minnesota, and all he could keep saying was, “are you kidding me?”

He had the same reaction years later when Blair Walsh missed. His best friend was at the game at TCF Bank Stadium and he was in New York in disbelief again.

Ever since then, John has adopted a tradition whenever the Vikings line up for a field goal. Whether it was Ryan Longwell or Kai Forbath or Greg Joseph, he always got up and walked out of the room. It made him too upset to watch, even if those kickers were very good overall.

With Will Reichard, he doesn’t do that anymore.

One thing that he likes about Reichard is that he was drafted by the team. He isn’t a random kicker who made the team out of camp or a veteran who has bounced around to 10 other teams.

“We drafted him so he’s got the pedigree,” John said. “Other than when he got hurt, I mean, he’s just been automatic. It’s just crazy to see somebody like that. I mean, it’s literally on par with some of the best kickers in the league, and we’re lucky to have him.”

John also mentions that Mike Zimmer not being the head coach helps when it comes to the kicker’s success.

“Zim was good but short sighted when it came to kickers,” John said, being very polite about Zimmer’s history of playing mind games with his specialists.

There’s something else that John has noticed that plays into his confidence with Reichard: That kicking these days is out of this world. The league is hitting 84.7% of its kicks this year and kickers have nailed 66-of-95 attempts over 50 yards. There are two misses under 40 yards this year.

In 1998, the league percentage was 79.6 and the NFL only went 47-for-87 from 50+ for the entire year and there were 49 kicks (out of 484) that were missed under 40 yards.

That still makes Anderson’s miss look rough but it shows how much kicking has changed.

“I feel like when a lot of these traumas that happened to Vikings fans, like, kicking’s come a long way since 1998, you know?” John said. “I think the whole mentality has changed. [Kicking] is one for kids to get into college on scholarship and… get an education. From the top down, it’s a position that people value now.”

In terms of the potential for a game-winning kick in the playoffs, John will be staying in front of the TV to watch and he’ll feel good about it. Reichard’s success has made him think about the way many Vikings fans re-live the team’s failures over and over and he doesn’t want to have that mentality.

“I was watching the Saban thing yesterday and in one episode the thing that stood out for me was [Saban] keeps saying, ‘live in the future, you can’t live in the past,’ so I guess that’s what we have to do to live in the future, not in the past,” John said. “That’s all you can do as Vikings fans.”

Andrew from Illinois

The first Vikings kicker that Andrew remembers is Faud Reveiz.

Coincidentally Reveiz had a couple of seasons where he was the Vikings’ main source of scoring, as Reichard has been in 2026. In 1994, Reveiz made a league-leading 34 field goals as the Warren Moon-led Vikings struggled to get into the end zone. In the playoffs, Reveiz nailed a 52-yarder in 1993 and then went 2-for-2 in 1994. The problem? Nobody remembers the makes when your team wins.

Anyway, when kicking is brought up, Andrew’s mind goes to a slightly different place than 1998 or 2015. He thinks about the kick that was never allowed to happen in 2009.

As the Vikings were setting up for a game-winning field goal, they committed a penalty for having 12 men in the huddle, moving them into a spot where they wanted one more pass completion before trying the field goal. Of course, that’s when Brett Favre threw an interception that allowed the New Orleans Saints to win in overtime.

“We were living in Atlanta at the time and my friend is a Georgia Bulldogs fan, big Falcons fan…he sends me a text message that’s just, ‘Longwell’s got this,’” Andrew said. “And had there not been 12 men in the huddle, maybe he would have….the rest is history. But just brutal.”

As an aside, the Vikings have a very normal field goal percentage in the playoffs, historically speaking. In 53 playoff games in team history, they have made 80.2% of their kicks. Nobody ever mentions Chuck Nelson’s 5-for-5 day in the Vikings’ 36-24 win over the 49ers in 1987. Or Rick Danmeier’s 3-for-3 day in a 6-point win vs. the Falcons in ‘83.

One of the most forgotten clutch kicks in Vikings history came from Kai Forbath. He made a 52-yarder in the Minneapolis Miracle game to give the Vikings a late lead.

Dan Bailey went 2-for-2 in the Vikings’ 2019 playoff win. Eddie Murray had a game-winner vs. the New York Giants in a 1997 playoff game (albeit only 24 yards).

Still, reminding folks that the Vikings’ kicking hasn’t let them down every time isn’t particularly reassuring to a Vikings fan like Andrew, who still feels a wave of anxiety when his team’s kicker lines up.

“I have this reflexive, like self-protective fatalist instinct to be to picture Blair Walsh hooking it left or to picture Gary Anderson or whatever,” Andrew said. “Because it’s [Reichard] and he’s been just really unbelievable, it’s almost like a reminder, like, no, it’s Will. He’s more than earned the benefit of the doubt.”

Who can blame him for still feeling the pang of fear. In 2015, Andrew had the bright idea to have a party at his house during the Vikings’ playoff game against Seattle. His wife told him it wasn’t a good idea to have people over when the Vikings could potentially let him down but he went against her advice. At least there were friends around to console him after Walsh missed.

In his early 40s, Andrew is trying to rewire his mindset and Reichard is part of that. He has been inspired by the way Reichard does not seem to have any fear for the moment. He has no expression before he kicks. He’s just going to swing his leg and whatever happens, happens.

“I think that’s almost like a model for how I’m trying to think about this team in any season, but especially this season,” Andrew said. “When there’s reasons to be ecstatic about the defense, to wonder about the offense, and to not know exactly what this is going to look like, but to just kind of enjoy the ride.”

Will he be thinking about just enjoying the ride if the season comes down to Reichard’s leg though?

“They say when you die that your life flashes before your eyes, I feel like the season will flash before my eyes, and I’ll be like, this is good,” Andrew said. “This is always where you want to be. And despite it, it’ll be stressful. I’ll probably be clutching the dog too tightly or something.”

Bradley from Dayton

Bradley has a tendency to get a little worked up during football games — to the point where his husband leaves the house to allow him space to stress-watch — but he’s only been brought to tears one time during a Vikings game: When Gary Anderson missed wide left.

Bradley, who grew up in Blaine, Minnesota, promises that he’s only fatalistic during the games and the rest of the time he’s an optimist, especially when Reichard is lining up for a field goal.

One of the reasons that he isn’t freaking during field-goal attempts is because of Reichard’s background. He loves the fact that Reichard went to Alabama despite their previous bad history with kickers.

“He wanted to break the curse, which to me on an 18 year old, that is some balls that just don’t exist. That just don’t exist,” Bradley said. “I don’t know how you say to yourself, ‘you know what, I’m going to go break this curse.’ In a world where the youth seems to want to make everything easy on themselves, he decided to take the path of most resistance.”

Reichard indeed broke the curse in college. In 2023, he set the record for most points ever scored in the SEC and hit a 52-yard field goal late in the game against Michigan in the college football playoff. He was also a two-time All-American.

Bradley, who is well-read on everything Vikings, saw a Star Tribune article that noted Reichard works with multiple different kicking coaches trying to perfect his kicks. He loved that.

“I think [Reichard] is just somebody who is trying to hone their craft and they’re not worried about the outside noise,” Bradley said.

One thing I’ve noticed when talking to fans about Reichard is that many tie in their own life experiences to their trust in Reichard.

Bradley is a competitor and played many hours of foosball growing up and he battles coworkers at table tennis as an adult. He is a headcase. A choke artist. He can’t handle the pressure.

“As soon as I would get in my own head, even though I was amazing at it, I ended up letting somebody come back into the game,” Bradley said. “I think there’s just some people, [Reichard] included, that just seem to be built differently. It’s like golfers too. You have all the pressure in the world and there’s just some that are so much better than others.”

There’s another part of his trust for Reichard that seems trivial but makes sense: His mis-kicks go in. In the muck against the Bears, Reichard was a bit off to the right and his kick ended up glancing in off the post. Bradley thought one of his kicks against the Saints was going left and then it drifted right back through the posts.

“I think I laughed because I was like…even when the guy misses, he makes it,” he said. “I just shake my head. I’m not a jersey guy, but like the couple of people who had posted with the jerseys, it was like, you do that. That is great.”

Bradley is not a believer in jinxes. He doesn’t care if Reichard misses one before the playoffs. He doesn’t think talking about the kicker’s pristine record will throw something off cosmically. He doesn’t leave the room anymore when Reichard kicks.

However, were the Vikings’ star kicker to line up for a game winner in the playoffs…

“I’ll be honest, I’d be on the ground praying sort of miracle,” Bradley said. “I think the funny thing is, we’re as nervous as we are but he doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to that, which is exactly what you want.”

Rick in Buffalo

Rick is the most skeptical of all of the fans I spoke with but he feels a little better knowing that Reichard has support. The kicker gets blamed for 100% of the results but Rick has been thinking about the other things that play into success or failure.

“There’s like four different things that could go sideways here,” Rick points out, referring to bad snaps, bad holds, opponents blocking kicks and whatever else could transpire aside from foot-to-ball.

The Vikings have the best long snapper in the NFL in Andrew DePaola. He is a two-time first-team All-Pro and hasn’t had a miscue since joining the team in 2020. The current holder, punter Brett Thorson, didn’t hold in college but did a good enough job in training camp that the team trusted him with its valuable merchandise. Not to mention special teams coach Matt Daniels has worked very closely with Reichard and Kevin O’Connell is very positive and supportive toward his kickers, unlike his predecessor.

Knowing that the operation is sound helps with a distrust of kickers that was formed in the upstairs bedroom of his parents’ house. Rick was 13 when he watched Gary Anderson miss wide left. He started punching the floor until his mom came up to remind him that wasn’t particularly productive behavior.

That miss was tough for Rick because he was just finding his love for football. While he was in the heart of Bills country, his fandom bounced around until one particular player changed everything for him: Randy Moss.

Nobody in the history of the NFL had played like Moss. As soon as Sega Dreamcast came out with the game NFL2K, Rick crushed all of his friends by throwing bombs from Daunte Culpepper to Moss.

He feels a little differently about Walsh’s miss vs. Anderson’s gaffe. While the Vikings lost on that kick, the final score was 10-9. Rick grumbles about the Vikings allowing Russell Wilson to run around and find a completion for a first down. His point is that they could have done a lot of other things in the game rather than bringing it down to another field goal.

In that same vein, Rick’s answer to the question of a late-game 50-yard field goal was that he hopes they go for fourth down rather than putting it on the foot of the kicker.

Maybe I should have been more specific about the circumstances of the hypothetical but nonetheless Rick came around to saying that he is “fine” with it if Reichard has to attempt a game-ending kick.

He is, however, on the side of wanting him to miss before the postseason.

“I don’t want it to hang it over every kick where you have to hear, ‘he hasn’t missed since blah blah blah blah,’” Rick said. “Just miss one get it over with.”

I did find a couple examples of a kicker being perfect in the regular season and nails in the playoffs. Green Bay’s Mason Crosby went unscathed in the 2020 season and then 4-for-4 in the playoffs, though none of his postseason kicks were from beyond 40 yards. Indy’s Mike Vanderjagt went 37-for-37 in 2003 and 3-for-3 in the playoffs. Maybe he’s not the best example though.

Anyway, Rick said that he sees Reichard as being resilient. He was impressed the way that he attempted to play through his injury in 2024 and may have come back a bit earlier than needed.

He also has a bit of a personal chip on his shoulder about the league-wide media not giving Reichard enough credit.

“If the rest of the league could perhaps catch up and understand [Reichard’s greatness] as opposed t talking about the kicker in Dallas all the time,” Rick said. “He’s good in his own right, but not as good. He seems to be overshadowing [Reichard], and no one seems to appreciate Will. That’s fine. The less attention, the better.”

And while he isn’t quite ready to declare total confidence in a 50-yarder in the playoffs, he doesn’t want that to come across as not being happy with Reichard’s performance.

“It’s definitely positive,” Rick said. “I’d much rather be here than the rotating band of misfits that the Rams, who are bringing in.”

Truth.

Still, years of anxiousness have brought Rick into a state of acceptance that Reichard may not be infallible.

“If another shank happens in the playoffs, that’s the Vikings,” he said.

Ben from Florida

Ben believes in curses. He also believes that curses can be broken.

When it comes to Reichard, there’s something he keeps coming back to: Alabama had a curse too.

“I looked up Alabama’s kicking history and it was really bleak, especially when Nick Saban started, they were winning championships and couldn’t kick to save their life,” Ben said. “He went there and it instantly flipped. They had the most consistent kicking and the all-time NCAA scorer. I think it was pure destiny that an NFL franchise that has a horrible kicking history drafted him and he’s changing the trajectory of it.”

Ben, who has been a fan since Moss arrived, has further logic to his premise that Reichard is the one who can buck history. He argues that Reichard has been around long enough to show that a meltdown is never on the way. After all, he’s 62-of-72 field goals and 77-of-77 extra points. That means he’s put foot to football 139 times and made 129 and most of the misses were impacted by his injury in 2024 or a TV wire in 2025.

“I feel like if he was going to shank a kick or get the yips, it would have happened by now”

Admittedly, you won’t find anyone higher on Reichard than Ben, no matter how much you love him. Ben is crafting a league MVP case for Reichard. He thinks that the Vikings’ kicker might be more popular in Minnesota than Justin Jefferson right now.

Respect the enthusiasm, folks.

Like the other fans, Ben was inspired by Reichard’s fearlessness when it came to mixing it up with Saints players.

“I’m like, you do not see that from a kicker, kicking is something that you have to be mentally built for and he’s built for it,” he said.

And there’s something about the way the actual kicks look that makes Reichard different in his eyes.

“My favorite thing about him is that he’s a perfectionist,” Ben said. “Every single kick goes directly down the middle of the goal posts. Also during his rookie year when he got hurt, he tried to kick through it. I’m like, he’s built mentally like a football player.”

So Ben must be the most confident person in the world if the playoffs come down to Reichard, right?

“The way he carries himself, I think he does away with the kicking curse of the Minnesota Vikings,” Ben said. “But…in the back of my mind I’ll never get it out of my head until he kicks the game winner in the NFC Championship game.”

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