This is the New Orleans Saints kicker news nobody wanted to write twice in twelve months, but here we are. Daniel Carlson is out as New Orleans' kicker, released Tuesday after converting just 8 of 12 field goals this season, a 66.7 percent clip tied for second worst in the NFL. That number leaves the Saints with zero kickers on their 53-man roster heading into Sunday's game against Cleveland, which is its own kind of statement about how a season can unravel.
Carlson is 31 and nine years into a career that once made him look like one of the safest bets at his position in football. He's a two-time All-Pro with the Raiders, a career 86.9 percent kicker, and by most accounts somewhere around the 10th-most accurate field goal maker in NFL history. None of that showed up in New Orleans. He missed two extra points in seven games and finished 3-for-7 from 50-plus yards, a split that tells you exactly where this season went sideways: Carlson was fine inside 49 yards and a coin flip beyond it, which is a brutal profile for a kicker the Saints signed in late August specifically because nobody else in the building had won the job outright.
The breaking point arrived in Paris. Carlson missed a 52-yard attempt and went 1-for-2 on field goals in a 16-10 loss to the Steelers, a defeat that dropped New Orleans to 2-5 heading into the bye. Coach Kellen Moore spent Monday saying the kicking situation would be "evaluated" without committing to a change, then changed it the next day anyway. That's not indecision, that's a coach buying himself 24 hours to make a roster move look considered instead of reactive.
New Orleans Saints Kicker News: What Happened to Daniel Carlson
The arc here is steep enough to flag on its own. Carlson hit at least 85 percent of his field goals in five straight seasons with Las Vegas, including a 93 percent year in 2021 and 91.9 percent in 2022, the two seasons that earned him All-Pro honors. That accuracy slid to 86.7 in 2023, 85 in 2024, and 81.5 in 2025, the year the Raiders chose not to re-sign him. A gradual decline is normal for kickers in their 30s. Cratering to 66.7 percent in seven games with a new team is not a decline, it's a collapse, and it's the kind of number that makes a front office stop looking for an explanation and start looking for a replacement.
The Saints didn't have to look far. Irish-born practice squad kicker Charlie Smyth, who came to New Orleans through the NFL's International Player Pathway program in 2024, steps into the job for Sunday's game against Cleveland. Smyth isn't a complete unknown in this building. He took over as the Saints' full-time kicker for the final six games of 2025 after New Orleans released Blake Grupe, and he made 12 of 16 field goals in that stretch, 75 percent. That's not an elite number, but it's nine points better than what Carlson just gave them, and it comes from a kicker who's already lived through a midseason promotion in this exact building.
Daniel Carlson vs Harrison Mevis: A Rough Year for NFL Kickers
Carlson isn't an isolated case. The only kicker in the league worse than him this season is Harrison Mevis, released by the Rams on October 13 after a 55.6 percent clip that included a missed 50-yard attempt and a blocked potential game-winner in an overtime loss to Buffalo. Mevis had been excellent as a rookie, 17-of-22 including a playoff game-winner against Chicago, and lost his job inside a month once the accuracy cratered in year two.
| Kicker | 2026 FG Record | FG% | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daniel Carlson | 8-12 | 66.7% | Released by Saints, Nov. 3 |
| Harrison Mevis | 5-9 | 55.6% | Released by Rams, Oct. 13 |
| Charlie Smyth | 12-16 (2025 stretch) | 75% | Saints' in-house replacement |
What Carlson and Mevis share is a pattern teams are clearly done tolerating: strong recent track record, early-season collapse, quick exit. There's no extended leash left for kickers in this league once the misses pile up. Seven games was enough for New Orleans to decide Carlson wasn't the answer. A month was enough for the Rams to decide the same about Mevis. Checked the almanac on that one, and it's a newer trend than it feels like. Kickers used to get a full season to find their footing. Now they get a bad month and a bye week.
What's Next for the New Orleans Saints
The kicker move didn't happen in a vacuum. It's the second roster decision the Saints have made coming out of the bye, after firing second-year run game coordinator T.J. Paganetti on Monday. That move followed a 17-carry, 18-yard rushing performance in Paris, the team's worst rushing output since 1999. New Orleans ranks 30th in yards per carry at 3.5 and 25th in yards per game at 86, numbers that explain why Moore felt he needed to shake something loose beyond just the kicking net. In a related move, the Saints claimed running back Audric Estime off waivers from Cleveland, a player who already spent seven games with New Orleans in 2025 before being released with an injury settlement in September. Bringing him back suggests the front office wants a familiar body in the backfield rotation immediately, not a developmental project.
All of it points to a franchise at 2-5, outscored 194-162 on the season, trying to fix two visible problems at once during the one week it had room to do it. There's recent precedent for a turnaround in this building. The Saints opened 2025 at 1-8 before a midseason quarterback change to Tyler Shough sparked a 4-1 finish over the final five games. Nobody's promising that happens again. But it's the shape of hope the organization is working from as it heads into Sunday against Cleveland with a new kicker who's never had a true training camp competition won outright, and a backfield getting a new voice calling the runs.
What I'm watching next is simple: how Smyth looks under real pressure, not just in a six-game audition with the job already handed to him, and whether the rushing attack shows anything different in its first week without Paganetti. Both answers start to show up Sunday.
