If you watched the waiver wire this past season, quite a few teams went through 2 placekickers during the year. Atlanta used 3 and the Patriots and the Titans used 4 each. Chase McLaughlin kicked for 3 different teams.
That's just my long winded way of saying finding a PK who can play in the league isn't as easy as it might seem. Now some of the guys I mentioned were probably due to injury, but I lean towards keeping a guy you know can do the job over being disappointed by guys who can't.
Is Zuerlein the best kicker in the league anymore? No. Is $4 mill too much to pay for him? Probably. (I'd say $3 top) Is he likely better than 90% of the guys who we could bring in to challenge him, I suspect probably yes.
For the curious, Sam Ficken, Greg's 2017& 18 replacement, this year had better numbers between the 40's (7-11 vs 5-11), worse from 50+ (3-6 vs 5-7) and worse on XP's (23-26 vs 42-42) They were both 7-8 between the 30's and 100% from closer.
