-
Kalyn Kahler
Close
Kalyn Kahler
ESPN
- Kalyn Kahler is a senior NFL writer at ESPN. Kalyn reports on a range of NFL topics. She reported about the influence of coaching agents on NFL hiring and found out what current and former Cowboys players really think about the tour groups of fans that roam about The Star every day. Before joining ESPN in July of 2024, Kalyn wrote for The Athletic, Defector, Bleacher Report and Sports Illustrated. She began her career at Sports Illustrated as NFL columnist Peter King’s assistant. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she was a varsity cheerleader. In her free time, Kalyn takes Spanish classes and teaches Irish dance. You can reach out to Kalyn via email.
-
Kevin Seifert
Close
Kevin Seifert
ESPN Staff Writer
- Kevin Seifert is a staff writer who covers the Minnesota Vikings and the NFL at ESPN. Kevin has covered the NFL for over 20 years, joining ESPN in 2008. He was previously a beat reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Washington Times. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia.
Eighteen days after Minnesota Vikings kicker Will Reichard missed a 51-yard field goal attempt against the Cleveland Browns in London when his ball took an unexpected turn, Amazon Prime play-by-play announcer Al Michaels reminded viewers that the strange curve of the ball at Tottenham Stadium is still a sensitive subject for the league.
«They’ve got a great kicker, Reichard is terrific,» Michaels said as the kicker prepared for his first field goal attempt with nine minutes left in the second quarter of Thursday night’s 37-10 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. «He comes in for a 54-yard attempt. His only miss this year was when he hit a wire — with the camera — in London!»
Reichard made his field goal, and back at 345 Park Avenue, a seemingly resolved mystery sprang to life once again. Already, the NFL had rejected a request from Reichard’s agent to drop the miss from the kicker’s official statistics. The league’s football operations department thought it was important enough to warrant a video presentation at the October league meeting. Now, following Michaels’ on-air comments, NFL officiating and rules analyst Walt Anderson was pulled into the fray.
Bundle ESPN and FOX One and unlock more sports for one unbeatable price. Get the World Series, college football, NBA, NHL and more. Get access
Anderson, the former VP of officiating training and development and a 17-year referee, now quietly assists each network’s rules analysts during games. The league says his role is to help each network’s broadcasters sound smarter, but as with any job in the league office, the first duty is to protect the shield, and Michaels’ comment reignited a dormant controversy the league thought it had moved past.
A league spokesperson said Anderson immediately called Amazon Prime rules analyst Terry McAulay and explained to him the league’s official stance on the London field goal: that Reichard’s ball did not make contact with the camera cable in London.
A league spokesperson said the league’s broadcasting department was in touch with Amazon’s production team during the game as well.
After a full quarter of game time, another field goal attempt and more than an hour of broadcast time, Michaels, with his trademark sarcasm, issued a correction.
«The league wants to take my lunch away because I said before that Reichard’s only miss came when he hit a wire in London,» Michaels said. «The league says, ‘No, no, it was an optical illusion.’ [That’s] not what Reichard thinks.»
take a spooky turn. «Will’s ball does not move like that,» he said. «I knew something was wrong.»
He watched the replay multiple times and took a screenshot of the moment he believes Reichard’s ball hit the wire. «The wire clearly ripples unevenly,» he said. «The ball isn’t going end-over-end anymore but fluttering diagonally.»
Justin Fields’ pass was deflected into the camera.
One source in the room said that NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent and Anderson said in the meeting that Reichard’s football looked as if it hit the wire but that it did not because the ball did not have «a weird spin.» The source said Vincent and Anderson said that Fields’ pass did hit the wire and that the officiating crew should have started the play over, as the rulebook mandates, instead of ruling an incomplete pass.
A league spokesperson sent ESPN the video of Reichard’s kick that was shown to NFL owners and executives in the football update meeting.
The 75-second video showed two angles of Reichard’s kick, the broadcast angle from behind the kick and a low sideline angle. In the broadcast angle, the league highlighted the four camera wires in red and blue to show the position of the wires in relation to the kick. Once Reichard kicks the ball, wires are no longer highlighted.
In the low sideline angle, the league highlighted the ball in yellow to show its position in relation to the wire in red. In this angle, both the wire’s position and the trajectory of the ball lead off screen.
«What really needs to be done is reevaluating how low those cameras and the wires can hang over a live play,» Ivler said. «That’s what the result of all this back and forth should be.»
For his part, Reichard has not been as preoccupied with the mystery of his London kick.
«I’ve gotten asked about it tons of times from friends, family,» he said.» I would just like to put it in the rearview at this point, you know? «
And he might have been able to three weeks ago, had the league’s strong defense not given this story legs.
