Report: New England Patriots Signed New Kicker To Replace Mike Nugent

The New England Patriots are 8-0 in the regular season, but they haven’t stop making changes. This time they cut kicker Mike Nugent and replaced him with free-agent kicker Nick Folk as confirmed by NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport.

This comes as a surprise, because head coach Bill Belichick was really satisfied with Nugent.

“Through the years, I have been lucky,” Belichick said in a news conference. “We have had a lot of stability, there’s no doubt about that. But, look, sometimes things happen, and you have to make changes, just like any other position, and you do the best you can. Steve Gostkowski’s one of the greatest kickers of all time. He’s been great for this franchise. Unfortunately, he’s not available, so we’ll move on.

“Mike’s done a good job. He has a lot of experience. I have a lot of confidence in Mike, or we wouldn’t have signed him. Is he different than Steve? Yeah. We’ll see how it goes. … I think Mike will do a good job, but we all have to prove it every week. That’s the way it is for all of us.”

Folk is the third kicker New England will try out this season. Stephen Gostkowski is placed on injured reserve after suffering his hip injury.

Gostkowski is the Patriots’ all-time leader in points and field goals. The Patriots will probably have him in the 2020 season.

“He’s meant a lot to this team, and you see a lot of that in the record books,” veteran safety Devin McCourty said of Gostkowski. “But I always speak on how much he means to the locker room. So he’ll definitely be missed throughout the year, having his presence in there.

“Whoever the next guy is that comes in here, he doesn’t need to try to be Steve or try to be Adam Vinatieri; he just needs to be himself,” special teams captain Matthew Slater said. “He’ll be here for a reason and that reason will be because Coach Belichick thinks he’s going to give us the best chance to help this team win games. We’ll support him. We’ll do what we can to help him adjust.”

Folk has been a kicker with the Dallas Cowboys, New York Jets and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He’s been part of the NFL for 11 years, and hasn’t kicked since 2017. The kicker did spent some time with the AAF’s Arizona Hotshots this summer. Folk went 12-of-16 on field goals in the AAF.

Let’s not forget that Folk was named to the Pro Bowl in 2007. It was his rookie season.