When former Alabama All-American Tua Tagovailoa threw a touchdown pass with 46 seconds to play on Sunday, the Miami Dolphins had wiped out the Los Angeles Chargers’ 13-point fourth-quarter lead to take a one-point advantage.
The Chargers needed heroes in a hurry, and they got them.
Nyheim Miller-Hines returned the kickoff 40 yards to the Los Angeles 41. Quarterback Justin Herbert shook off outside linebacker Jaelan Phillips to complete a short pass to Ladd McConkey. The Chargers wide receiver ran past Miami safety Dante Trader and raced to a 42-yard gain.
Los Angeles coach Jim Harbaugh said the play “will be burned in my mind till they throw dirt over top of me.”
With five seconds to play, Cameron Dicker kicked his fifth field goal of the game – this one a 33-yarder – to provide a 29-27 victory for the Chargers.
But all that would have gone by the wayside if not for Los Angeles punter JK Scott.
The former Alabama standout serves as the holder for Dicker’s kicks, and on the one to win the game, Scott got an errant snap from Rick Lovato, who’s been working at long snapper for Los Angeles while Auburn alumnus Josh Harris is on injured reserve.
Scott managed to catch cleanly the off-line snap and whipped the football into place – laces out – for the kick.
Harbaugh was asked if he saw how Scott had saved the game for the Chargers.
“I sure did,” Harbaugh said. “It’s what I look at. It’s what I look at when I’m watching a field goal. That’s what my eyes go to. It was a great hold by him and then getting it down. And then as I saw it, you know, reach for it and put it down, then I’m thinking, ‘OK, this going to be tough on the kicker.’ I mean, that timing is thrown off a bit. But then I’m like, ‘Hey, this is Cameron Dicker we’re talking about.’ And then it went through.
“And then I look at the protection and, you know, it was that close, but our guys gave us just enough time.”
Both Scott and Dicker joined the Chargers in the 2022 season, with the kicker coming aboard for the final 10 games after appearing in one contest for the Philadelphia Eagles.
Dicker has made 105-of-111 field-goal attempts. With a 94.6 percent success rate, he’s the most accurate kicker in NFL history.
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When Scott joined Los Angeles, he already had played in four NFL seasons, and he’s re-signed with the Chargers twice, including in March. The Chargers offered a two-year, $6 million contract to keep Scott out of free agency.
Scott entered the NFL as a fifth-round selection of the Green Bay Packers in the 2018 draft after establishing Alabama career records for punts, punting yards and punting average.
On the day that NFL teams had to reduce their preseason rosters to the regular-season limit for 2021, Green Bay obtained punter Corey Bojorquez in a trade with the Los Angeles Rams and waived Scott, even though he had a year left on his contract.
Scott was out of football until signing with the Jacksonville Jaguars on Dec. 31, 2021. With regular punter Logan Cooke sidelined by a knee injury, the Jaguars picked up Scott, and he averaged 39.8 yards on four punts with no return yards in a 50-10 loss to the New England Patriots on Jan. 2.
Scott signed a one-year, $965,000 contract with the Chargers on March 21, 2022. He briefly entered free agency in 2023 before returning to Los Angeles for a two-year, $4 million contract and never reached free agency in 2025.
Scott has appeared in 106 NFL regular-season games and has a 45.3-yard average, with a 40.5-yard net, on his 437 career punts. Scott also has punted in six playoff contests.
On 19 punts this season, Scott has a 49.8-yard average, with a 43.5-yard net. He has one touchback and eight punts that pinned the opponent inside its 20-yard line.
The Chargers play the Indianapolis Colts at 3:05 p.m. CDT Sunday at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.
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