Will Reichard is calm in chaos -- even in pregame warmups

A closer look at Reichard's pregame routine and stellar season

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By Matthew Coller

Moments before kickoff at Ford Field, Will Reichard set a football up with a tee at the 40-yard line. He took a few paces back, looked up toward the goal posts, then back down at the ball. Step, step, bang. Right through the middle of the uprights.

Reichard paid no mind to the approximately 80 citizens holding a gigantic “Salute to Service” banner that stretched from the 5-yard line to the 25-yard line. He was not seemingly distracted by the dozens more humans holding an American flag that spanned 50% of the field behind him. He was unbothered by the row of Detroit Lions drum liners who were in the end zone right below the goal posts. Nor was he thrown off his game by the flag bearers on the sideline, Lions player stretching right behind him or the blaring Eminem-laden pregame hype video or the 70,000 people watching the pregame ceremonies.

Reichard is going to get in his pregame kicks, no matter what — even if the NFL brings back pregame pyrotechnics (which have been banned since 2019).

“It’s great to warm up 90 minutes before the game but to be able to get those reps two or three minutes before the game, from a confidence standpoint if I’m hitting the ball really well then I’ll be feeling really well about how I’m going to play, which is important,” Reichard told Purple Insider this week.

Any normal human being would not be able to remember their own name amidst the amount of sensory overload happening, much less concentrate in order to get valuable reps in that type of situation. Golfers, of whom kickers are usually compared, need complete silence to strike the ball. Imagine if they had to do it in the middle of a South Beach club. But for Reichard, this is life as a kicker. Throughout his entire career, he’s had to find ways to get in one more boot wherever he can.

“It’s routine for us,” Reichard said. “That goes always back to high school. When you’re in high school and there’s only one field and you’re trying to figure out a way to get reps in. You might run out there in between plays and get a rep, so it’s 10 years of trying to steal reps here and there.”

Special teams coordinator Matt Daniels, a former NFL player himself, doesn’t question Reichard’s process when it comes to getting those final few kicks in before gametime, even if he doesn’t understand how he can do it either.

“They don’t care. It’s funny because there’s so much noise going on around them and they don’t even notice it at all,” Daniels said. “It is crazy out there a lot of times. Yeah, it’s crazy.”

They have to notice a little though, otherwise somebody could get hurt. Reichard has seen the look of fear in the eyes of common men and women in jeans and hoodies as he lines up to send a pigskin rocket in their direction.

“People always get scared,” Reichard said, chuckling. “I’ll see the look on their face and they’ll start ducking. I’ll be like, ‘I promise you, you’re fine, I’m not going to hit you.’ I try to be mindful. They are performers out there so I try not to get in their way and try not to call any attention to myself because I want everyone to watch what they are doing but at the same time I’ve got to get loose too.”

Every single Sunday, long snapper Andrew DePaola watches from the sideline in fear himself that something is going to go wrong.

“Terrified that they are going to hit somebody,” DePaoloa said, adding that he has witnessed participants during pregame get hit before. “If they could not be out there at all, that would be great. I know they have their routine and the things they are trying to do to get warm and stay warm and get their aiming points but if they weren’t out there I’d be fine with that.”

There have been some mishaps in the recent past, such as a ball that went off a specialist’s foot flying in the direction of the broadcast booth and one of the players going out to kick during a somber moment to celebrate cancer survivors.

Last year when the Vikings played the Jets in London, Jets kicker Greg Zuerlein’s pregame kicks kept rolling on despite the Vikings cheerleaders surrounding him during their dance routine.

“You have to get loose and find a way to get reps in and try to make sure that I don’t put those people in danger,” Reichard said.

Reichard did say that the kickers and punters don’t receive any information before the game about what’s going to happen in pregame ceremonies. At home, they have a better idea of the schedule but on the road they have no idea what will be going on when they trot out there for the last couple kicks.

“We just kind of figure it out,” Reichard said.

Whatever the Vikings’ second-year kicker is doing, it’s working. This year he has made 18 of 20 field goals and 17-for-17 on extra points. His 90% make percentage is sixth best in the NFL and he is third in makes over 50 yards (six). One of the misses came when he had to kick a football used by the QB because it was a “fire drill” situation and the other was the miss overseas that some thought hit a camera wire (though the NFL very strongly denies that it did, just ask Al Michaels).

“You sometimes forget that Will Reichard is only in his second year in the NFL,” Daniels said. “How he really goes by his daily routine and this guy just has a killer mindset, that’s really what you love and appreciated by the guy but he’s done an unbelievable job.”

Reichard’s mental toughness and personality was part of the Vikings’ evaluation when he came out of college as a 2024 sixth-round pick from Alabama.

“There’s always been this swagger to Will that I think comes from his natural confidence and authentic confidence in doing his job,” head coach Kevin O’Connell said.

Reichard’s self belief is all about his preparation.

“He’s a process-driven person,” DePaola said. “That plays into his confidence. If the result isn’t what we want, he is not going back and being like, ‘where did I go wrong?’ No, he’s going to stick with his process. It got him to this point. He’s such a level-headed guy. I know he gets fired up when he makes a big kick but he’s not down in the dumps when he misses one or like, ‘don’t talk to me.’”

Of course, his process, preparation and nerves of steel while kicking a game winner or a pregame try in front of the cheerleaders and drum line wouldn’t mean much if he didn’t have a unique level of talent as well. If you listen close, you can hear his foot drilling the football over the pomp and circumstance before the games.

“The way it sounds coming off the foot, I’ve used the analogy before: I don’t think it takes long when baseball scouts hear a high school senior throw a fastball and it hits the catcher’s mitt and sounds a certain way, or the ball coming off the bat of Shohei Ohtani or Byron Buxton,” O’Connell said. “I think it’s kind of like that with Will, and he sets a really high standard for himself personally, and he’s having a great year.”

ADDITIONAL NOTES

— JJ McCarthy was a full participant in practice on Thursday and Friday and has no designation going into the game. He’s a full go after getting his hand banged up.

— Jonathan Greenard is out with a shoulder injury.

— On Chicago’s side, Chicago opened Jaylon Johnson’s 21-day window to return and listed him as questionable. It could be a huge factor for Chicago’s defense if he returns. Jaquon Brisker is listed as questionable as well but he told the Chicago media that he plans to play.

— I asked Kevin O’Connell about Bears DC Dennis Allen blitzing a lot against Jaxon Dart last week and how he might prepare for exotic looks versus another young QB. Here’s what he said:

“I think any Dennis Allen coached defense, this goes back a long way, he’s one of the best in the league at kind of those third-down pressures. He’s got ways of he’s a really good coach that makes a lot of things look the same, but they end up being different. You got to be totally locked in and all 11 guys on the same page.”

“You got to communicate pre snap. You got to make sure you’re in and out of the huddle in a timely manner, so J.J. [McCarthy] has got time at the line of scrimmage to assess the use of any tools he has to protect himself. And then it comes down to, after all that, we’ve got to get the same level of protection and the standard at which, I think our guys coming off of a good week, where we did protect pretty well for the most part last week against a good, physical Baltimore front, and we’re going to need that again.”

“This is an active front, active scheme. They’re blitzing DBs. They’re blitzing linebackers and playing a variety of different coverages behind it. So, they’ve put a lot of really good stuff on tape in the third-down world this year, and we got to be ready for it.”

— Ryan Kelly practiced this week including in full team drills per KOC.

“He was limited on Wednesday, and then fully padded, participated in a limited capacity on Thursday,” O’Connell said. “He’s in a great spot. This kind of boils down to more so just what we think is best for the player that started many days and weeks ago, just to make sure with his own personal kind of concussion history that I mentioned to you guys at one point, that hopefully he would bang down my door, and he’s pretty darn close to that. And I think we’ve got a really good plan moving forward. Excited about it.”

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