How kicker Joey Slye went from signed ‘on a whim’ to Panthers starter in a year
Just over a year ago, Joey Slye was signed by the Carolina Panthers as a “camp leg,” a temporary solution while injured veteran kicker Graham Gano continued to heal.
“He just came in on a whim — we needed to bring a guy in, and he was there — and he came in and just killed it in his workout,” former Panthers coach Ron Rivera said of the decision to sign Slye.
As the Panthers ramp up their 2020 training camp, Slye, 24, is now much more than a player brought in as a band-aid solution. He has the potential to establish himself this season as the Panthers’ kicker of the future.
After Gano spent the 2019 season on injured reserve, the Panthers chose to keep Slye last month over the established veteran. Gano was released in the process of reducing the roster down to 80 players, with Carolina saving money with the move.
The former Virginia Tech kicker, who spent the 2018 season living in his parent’s basement without a full-time job, is now the only kicker on the Panthers’ roster.
“It’s pretty much the same mental approach, whether Graham was going to be here or not. I knew personally I needed to go out and perform to my best abilities and that everything else is going to kind of be in the hands of those that are up top,” Slye said this week. “I’ve just been still doing the same thing that I was going to be doing if he was here.”
Back to basics
What Slye has been doing is working on getting better by returning to the basics with his kicking coach, Dan Orner, and fixing his issues from last season. Orner, who is based in Charlotte, is a former UNC kicker who works with place kickers and punters from the high school, collegiate and professional ranks.
Slye has a special relationship with Orner, who he has been working with since he was a teenager, when kicking didn’t even seem destined to be the sport he would play in college.
“He and I have known each other since he was like 14 or 15 when he was a linebacker and a fullback, and thought that he would play (in) college at one of those positions,” Orner said. “We’d work with each other for a couple days over the summer, all the way through his high school career and through college.”
Other positions didn’t work out for Slye, and he ended up walking on at Virginia Tech.
“I think it was probably a little bit of a humbling process. He probably was one of the better athletes at his high school, but a lot of times it doesn’t equate to being a starting linebacker or a running back in college,” Orner said. “He probably could have got a scholarship to a bunch of other universities to kick and probably play other positions, but he chased opportunity and really felt like he could be the starting kicker and from day one as a freshman.”
Slye set plenty of records during his time at Virginia Tech. He is the program’s all-time leading scorer and has the most field goals made in Hokies history. Kickoffs were a strong suit. The power of his leg was never in doubt.
“He’s always had one of the top two biggest legs that I’ve seen out of high school (and) in college,” Orner said. “He would routinely hit kickoffs that hit people in the stands.”
What was an issue was his consistency. Over his four-year college career, Slye averaged 72.9% of field goal attempts. That number is slightly misleading due to the outlier season he had in 2015, during which he made 76.7% of his field goals. His senior year was his worst statistical season, making 68.2% of his attempts but connecting on all 37 of his extra-points.
His first NFL season was up and down as well. After impressing coaches by making 7-of-8 field goal attempts in the preseason, Slye set a franchise record for the most made field goals (eight) longer than 50 yards in one season. But he finished with the 23rd best field goal percentage (78.1%) and missed four extra-point attempts.
The Panthers brought in kicker Greg Joseph to compete against Slye after a three-point loss in New Orleans in which he missed two extra points and a 28-yard field goal, but never they actually benched the rookie.
“I’m constantly trying to improve myself, my mental game, my physical game,” Slye said. “(I’m) just trying to tighten that window between what my best ball is from what my worst ball is. And then obviously just being able to critique things on the fly, get better kick to kick, week to week, stuff like that.”
During his rookie season, it became a fixture to see Slye writing down notes for himself. He takes notes during practices as well, jotting down things that what went right and wrong on certain kicks.
Finding ways to improve himself with Orner continued during his rookie season, and Slye often attended practices alongside high school kickers.
“He takes time out of his day to not only kick against the high school guys and serve as a great role model, but if they ask him questions, he gives him the shirt off his back,” Orner said. “I think that’s helped his development a lot, because essentially you could teach it to other folks when that aspect of your swing maybe gets a hiccup. Then, a lot of times, it helps you make an adjustment from kick to kick or in certain situations.”
Getting ready for year two
Orner describes Slye as “your classic blue collar, humble, hard-working kid.” Prior to some Panthers games, Orner will come onto the field and pass along any mental tips or reminders if needed based on the day’s conditions.
This offseason, the pair trained two to three times a week. getting work done in a variety of conditions that the Charlotte weather presented. They would have days where they worked on fundamentals, like different aspects of his swing, or his stance, or his run up to the ball. In June they started to bring in live snappers and holders. Other NFL kickers joined to create a more competitive atmosphere in July.
“Just like a quarterback would have their steps, just like a wide receiver has their routes, kickers have their tracks to the ball and the track would be their steps to the ball, so that was one of the big things that he wanted to work on (this offseason),” Orner said. “He (also) wanted one to two days of just really heavy fundamentals, doing the little stuff great. We spent one day just working on contact, the next day just working on his tempo and track to the ball, and then he had a list of about 10 or 15 specific kicks that he wanted to kind of master that he missed last year. It was a little bit technical and it was a little bit tempo, and then the other piece obviously was just situational.”
The second-year player also has to adjust to working with a new punter after veteran Michael Palardy’s season came to an early conclusion following an offseason ACL tear.
Training camp, however, isn’t the first time Slye has been exposed to his new holder, Joseph Charlton, an undrafted rookie free agent from the University of South Carolina. Charlton works with Orner as well, which gave the pair extra time to work together.
The opportunity to get comfortable with each other in advance of practices getting underway and start building trust is important. Orner emphasized that a bad holder can almost ruin a kicker’s career, but Charlton had plenty of valuable experience with the Gamecocks that has prepared him for the NFL.
Slye has a big opportunity ahead in what will be a very unusual season. The amount of fans in the stands or irregularity of the season won’t matter as much to Slye, who said he can’t hear the noise anyway when he’s kicking. It’s all about the basics.
“If I can get my subconscious and conscious mind to work together, then game situations no matter what the pressure of anything is, you kind of get into the same state every single time,” Slye said. “Just continuing being able to recall things, systems that happen and understand every little piece of it.”
This story was originally published August 12, 2020 at 3:50 PM.
