Dave Damashek

Man, place kickers got to be the funniest position in sports, right?

The NFL is all about sizable men running full speed into each other on purpose.

Then right at the end, a little fella runs out with a single bar face mask and mismatch sues to decide the outcome.

Now, I get it.

It's the QB league, but it's also football.

Foot's right there in the title.

So what happens in the kicking game is not going to stay in the kicking game.

And we'd be having very different conversations this week without the rangy performances of football's redheaded stepchildren.

The story right now would be Burroughs Bengals losing another week one game, so thank goodness for them, Browns kicker Andre Schmidt brownsed it up and missed an extra point and a 35-yard field goal.

Aaron Rodgers was great on Sunday, but so was Justin Fields.

The real difference was the Jets fumbled a kickoff and missed an extra point.

Meantime, the sky'd be falling in Pittsburgh right now if Chris Boswell hadn't made 60 and 56 yarders.

Lots of people are rightly giving Josh Allen his flowers after Sunday night, but it was Buffalo kicker Matt Prater, who looks kind of like a singer who made a country music top 40 hit in 1998 and is now making a comeback just after a show at the Best Western in West Lafayette where they paid him in beer, is the guy who really saved the night.

Whereas Ravens kicker Tyler Lute missed an extra point.

How much did they lose by again?

And the arrow would be pointing up for Caleb Williams and not J.J.

McCarthy if the Bears kicker, Cairo Santos, hadn't shanked a 50-yarder, whereas Vikes kicker, Will Riker, drilled a 59-yarder.

My point being, I know it's the QB league and all that, but all the points matter, even the extra ones.

So we can celebrate the QBs, but toast the little fellas too.

At least the ones who are good!