Sometimes, all it takes is having the right teammate at the right time.
Ultimately, that’s one of the biggest reasons that Trey Smack is now the Green Bay Packers’ kicker. When he was going to high school in Maryland, Smack was a lacrosse player, not a kicker on his school’s football team. But he had an incredible leg anyway, and when you have a teammate whose father is a former All-Pro kicker who had a 19-year career in the NFL, you’ll have a better chance to be discovered and tutored than the average person.
That’s essentially what happened to Smack. He quickly became the top kicking recruit in the country, which led him to being a 6th-round draft pick of the Packers. It’s fun story to see playing out, and hopefully he’ll have a long, successful career like that of his mentor (with a couple of Super Bowl rings, also like his mentor).
Meanwhile, the NFL’s schedule release from last week has finally come and gone, but over the last few days, there have been some ongoing pieces of analysis about it. For the Packers, there’s some good news about the strength of schedule when you look ahead rather than looking backwards, and there’s also one notable oddity that hasn’t happened in at least 15 years (depending on how you define it).
Let’s take a look at those items as we wait just one more week for the start of OTAs in Green Bay.