As many of you know by now, I've been keeping an eye on things with the Japanese X-League for a while now. I have especially had a keen interest in their kickers as they are the most likely, along with the punters, to make an NFL roster at this time. I first want to say, after watching this highlight video of the Rice Bowl ..
which is the Japanese version of the Super Bowl, they seem to be getting better and even more serious about American Football in Japan. Secondly, and most importantly for our discussion, I think we have some options at kicker from Japan if we wanted to have a tryout to see who is the best kicker between them and Maher. If you notice baseball field markings, the game was played in the Tokyo Dome, as is tradition for that League. It's not uncommon in Japan for stadiums to share sports, though, from what I've seen on Google Maps and highlights, they do have an American Football specific field near Haneda airport. Though, the Tokyo Dome is one of the largest stadiums in Japan, so they naturally get the big game in Japan. Anyway, back to my analysis.
The game was between the Fujitsu Frontiers and the Panasonic Impulse. Fujitsu won 29-21 over the Impulse. There was a spot where the game was 22-21, but I suspect that was due to Fujitsu trying a 2 point conversion to make it 24-21. From what I saw, it looks as though the kickers made the XPs. The kicker for Fujitsu also drilled a field goal that had a ton of room. From what I googled, his name is Koji Nasho wearing number 5 (
https://sports.jp.fujitsu.com/frontiers/players). The other kicker is Shintaro Saeki (
https://www.americanfootballinternational.com/japan-2022-x1-super-all-x-league-teams-announced/).
He apparently was the All Star kicker from this year in Japan. I think bringing in those two and Yamasaki, who you've seen me prop up here before, to compete with Maher would be a very good thing. It'd allow us a chance to try them out to find who the best kicker is. I definitely think that we will end up with quite the find at kicker. Bear in mind, the Cowboys once fixed a kicking issue by getting Toni Fritsch from Austria, so this wouldn't be the first time that we looked abroad for kicking talent. I think it's time we do it again.