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Rookie minicamp for the Titans began last week, and the roster is beginning to take the earliest of cuts and tests. One thing Mike Vrabel’s team has been good at is getting the most out of unheralded names. MyCole Pruitt, Ola Adeniyi, Nick Westbrook-Ikhine and others have shown that on one of Vrabel’s teams, anyone can contribute. Vrabel himself said he doesn't care where or if his players were drafted, he just wants them to find a role on his football team.
After the conclusion of the draft, a familiar process ran its course in Nashville, as numerous undrafted free agents were picked up. Some may not even see the first preseason game but at least one will put himself in serious contention to make the roster. That player? Meet Caleb Shudak, kicker out of Iowa.
Titans Undrafted Free Agent To Make 2022 NFL Roster
Now, obviously a kicker being the centerpiece of the Titans undrafted free agent class isn't going to jump off the page but let me explain. The Titans need a kicker to stick a lot more desperately than most teams. You see, since 2019, the Titans kicking game has had a rough time to say the least. That 2019 Titans kicking unit only converting 44.4% of its kicks, good for worst since 1983, and tied for 10th worst since the merger.
The Titans were so bad at kicking field goals that year they brought the overall league average down by 0.6% all by themselves. Only eleven teams since the merger brought the league-wide percentage down further. Perhaps the key to the Titans success late in the year and into the playoffs in 2019 was due to the fact that they did not attempt a single field goal between the end of Week 15 and the AFC Championship game.
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The Titans weren't historically bad in 2020, but they weren't vastly improved either, nailing 71.4% of their kicks, only the Vikings were worse. They also went through another two kickers without finding a long-term solution. In 2021, the Titans seemingly found a somewhat stable option in Randy Bullock, but he was only able to drag the Titans up to a paltry 23rd in the league in field goal percentage.
Another issue was that Bullock was a whole lot less reliable past 40 yards, being perfect inside that range but only hitting nine of fourteen outside it. In the modern NFL you have to be able to hit kicks from any and everywhere on the field, and Bullock doesn't appear to be a long term answer for that.
So where does Shudak fit in here? Well, in his lone season starting for Iowa, Shudak went 24 of 28 on field goals, but a very impressive 7 of 7 between 40 and 49 yards, and 4 of 6 outside 50. Read that again. Shudak only missed two kicks from farther out than 40 yards, while attempting an almost identical amount to Bullock in 2021. Of course, this was the only season Shudak started for the Hawkeyes, with only a single field goal attempt in 2020 and a single extra point being his Hawkeyes legacy up until then.
However, there is good reason for that, Shudak was stuck behind All-American, Big Ten All-Decade Team selection and Groza award finalist Keith Duncan. So while, yes, Shudak's sample size isn't as big as some NFL teams would like, but it's not as if there wasn't incredibly good reason for it. When Shudak got his chance, he took it.
