Going toe to toe
The Raiders are evaluating two kickers on their roster, eight-year veteran Matt Gay and rookie UDFA Kansei Matsuzawa.
Matsuzawa has made headlines before arriving to Las Vegas. Nicknamed "The Tokyo Toe," he was motivated to teach himself how to kick a football with YouTube tutorials after attending a Monday Night Football game between the Raiders and Rams. He was named a consensus All-American in 2025 after going 27-of-29 on field goals at Hawaii.
"[M]ore self-taught, but this guy's done a great job in college, he had film to watch" said Joe DeCamillis, Raiders special teams coordinator. "It wasn't like he just came off the street and he's one of those tryout guys that never kicked. ... I think it's going to be a heck of a story."
Gay has a established relationship with DeCamillis after spending two seasons together on the Los Angeles Rams. The vet had a great showing during the situational special teams period, going 5-of-6 with a long field goal made for well over 50 yards near the end of practice.
DeCamillis said there are multiple factors to kicking competitions beyond makes and misses. He placed both kickers in several in-game scenarios to see how they kick under pressure.
"[O]bviously end of the game, end of the half kicks are more important than just the normal ball, for sure," he said. "They have to be able to do both, but there's a lot of things that go into play with all that stuff."