Chargers News: Kicker carousel continues, Travis Coons released

The Los Angeles Chargers’ kicker position has been like a ride at an amusement park this season.

Nick Rose will be the fourth man to take his turn in 2017 after the team released Travis Coons on Monday. Coons had arguably been the Chargers’ best kicker this season.

The strange odyssey started prior to the season when the Chargers chose to go with undrafted rookie Younghoe Koo over Josh Lambo. Koo went on to miss half of his six field-goal attempts and a costly miss against the Miami Dolphins cost him his job. Meanwhile, Lambo was later picked up by the Jacksonville Jaguars where he has enjoyed a solid season with one of the league’s best teams, making 17 of 18 of his field goals and 19 of his 20 extra-point attempts.

After cutting Koo, the Chargers brought back Nick Novak, a guy who had spent four seasons with the Chargers while they were in San Diego. He went just 9-for-13 on field goals before injuries cut his season short.

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With Novak on IR, the team brought in Coons, a California-born kicker who had been the kicker for the Cleveland Browns in 2015. He made 28 field goals that year and was 7-for-8 in his short time with the Chargers. But he missed an extra point against the Kansas City Chiefs on Saturday night and that was apparently his undoing. He didn’t have the strongest leg, either.

Rose is 23 years old and has already spent time with three NFL teams after going undrafted out of Texas in 2016. He lost a training camp battle to Matt Bryant of the Atlanta Falcons that year and spent time in the camp of the San Francisco 49ers this past summer. The Washington Redskins brought him in when Dustin Hopkins was placed on injured reserve earlier this year and went 10-for-11 kicking field goals for the team. But the Redskins chose to bring Hopkins back off IR and waive Rose. Just two days later, Rose finds himself in Los Angeles.

Will Rose be the kicker of the future for the Chargers? The way the team is going through them, that’s not likely. But the team needs to find a guy it can stick with for more than a month so hopefully Rose can show something in these last two games that gives him a chance to be that guy.