The Minnesota Vikings’ Will Reichard has had 20 potential scoring kicks this season. He’s made 19 of them – 11 extra points and eight field goals.
The former Hoover High School and Alabama standout has missed only a 51-yard field-goal attempt in the Vikings’ most recent game.
But did Reichard really miss it?
Minnesota special-teams coordinator Matt Daniels said the Vikings included video of the kick with their plays from the game sent to the league because of concerns and questions about officiating. But Minnesota coaches haven’t revealed the NFL’s response, if there was one.
With the Vikings trailing the Browns 17-14, Reichard’s 51-yard field-goal attempt went wide right with 9:41 to play on Oct. 5. But questions have been raised about why the football went wide right, with a camera-support cable at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London becoming a suspect in costing Minnesota three points.
“Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t,” Daniels said on Tuesday when asked if the kick hit the cable. “We’ll allow the league to kind of work that one out. We submit plays each and every week, and those were one of the plays that we submitted. League is sending their response back to (Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell), and so I’ll kind of let KO figure that portion out.”
If the cable did interfere with the football on its way to the uprights, then the play should have been whistled dead and Reichard given a re-kick opportunity.
“I think the biggest question that I had,” Daniels said, “because I’ve seen Will hit a gazillion balls, was just in terms of how it came off his foot and the trajectory of it and how it kind of went off to the side was kind of the only question I had, just in terms of: How did that ball end up doing that? So I had a good conversation with Will, and he felt like he hit it clean. He hit it clean, and so you know sometimes the ball just has a funny way of going.”
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The day after the game, O’Connell said he didn’t notice the ball hitting anything, but he did find Reichard’s miss unusual.
“That’s a pretty tough angle normally, for us anyway,” O’Connell said. “Most of the time, I’m just trying to gauge the crowd reaction -- depending on if the video board in the stadium is in real time. Sometimes it’s on a slight delay, so you can’t watch that. But you’re really trying to just gauge the crowd reaction. And we did have a lot of purple in at Tottenham Stadium.
“So it was one I did not notice. I did not see it in the moment. I would defer to the league on, you know, if that’s something that there should be some protocols in place that I should know about. But other than maybe somebody in the booth alerting me that they saw it, or, you know, Will himself is going to be a critical guy in that moment. But a lot of times a kicker is a lot like a golf swing. They’re keeping their head down, and they might not even see it initially.
“He told me he thought he hit it well, and, you know, Will doesn’t end up that far off-line historically since our time having him here. But, yeah, not really sure what to say on that one other than that was unfortunate if it did happen, and if it didn’t, so be it.”
Reichard’s eight good field goals in 2025 include a 62-yarder in the Vikings’ 48-10 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals on Sept. 21. That kick surpassed the franchise record for the longest field goal. Greg Joseph made a 61-yarder on the final snap to lift Minnesota to a 27-24 victory over the New York Giants on Dec. 24, 2022.
After Reichard’s 62-yarder, O’Connell said: “I got so much confidence in Will, it’s almost dangerous.”
Reichard’s “miss” against Cleveland didn’t cost the Vikings in the end. Minnesota rallied for a 21-17 victory on a touchdown with 25 seconds to play.
That allows the Vikings to come out of their bye week with a 3-2 record for their game against the Philadelphia Eagles at noon CDT Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
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