When New York Giants special teams coordinator Chris Horton met the media earlier this week, the first question he got was about the team’s placekicking competition.
Horton laughed and said, “You want to start at the kicker battle?”
Of course. Where else was there to start except the placekicking competition between Dominic Zvada and Ben Sauls?
The position has been a problem for the Giants for several years. Injuries and poor decisions in the kicking game cost the Giants games, and the team finally moved on from Graham Gano this offseason. The Giants attempted to replace Gano with a three-way kicking competition between Sauls, Zvada, and veteran kicker Jason Sanders.
It was a surprise when the Giants released Sanders earlier in the offseason. That move left them with three-game veteran Sauls and Zvada, an undrafted rookie.
Sauls was seen as an early favorite, as he had in-game experience with the Giants in 2025, while Zvada was coming off a rough year at Michigan. However, Sauls struggled early in the offseason while Zvada seemingly reverted to his All-American form from 2024.
“It’s two young guys that are doing very well,” Horton said. “Both guys’ leg talent is there. Both guys, where they are right now from where they were during this spring, I mean, it’s been tremendous growth just watching these guys go out and compete against each other. They know that they’re in a competition, and they come out every day, and they work hard.
“It’s just like any other position, just like any other thing. We all got to start somewhere, right? Somebody’s just got to be willing to give you an opportunity, but that opportunity, like I said, comes with the process, and once you go through the process, and you follow that process, and you believe in yourself, everything else takes care of itself because it comes with discipline and consistency, right?”
Zvada is coming off of a rough 2025 season at Michigan. Horton says that Zvada’s process has been isolating the factors that led to him being inconsistent and working on those issues. So far, the results have been outstanding.
“You watch him [Zvada], you watch his form, you watch him at the Combine, and you just ask him what do you think led to those missed kicks?” Horton said. “And it was a lot of things; he talked about it being a lot of things, and then we just tried to find a ball. We tried to find an operation that fit him, and we changed a couple things, and then he’s kicking the ball straight.”
Zvada is indeed kicking straight through the uprights, going 7-for-7 in Wednesday’s practice. He also showed off his leg and was good from 50, 53, and 62 yards.
One aspect of special teams that often goes unnoticed is how delicate the whole operation can be. If the timing is off by a fraction of a second, or the angle of the hold is off by a degree, it can result in a bad miss 60 yards down the field.
And in that vein, Horton noted that it’s difficult for a holder to switch sides between a left- and right-footed kicker. Horton added that part of Sauls’ kicking issues earlier in the offseason may be related to how Stout was holding the ball.
“So, they [Sauls’ kicks] would all tail off to the right,” Horton said. “It was a combination of how you hold the ball, the movement on the ball, where Jordan (Stout) should seat the ball, the kind of lean and all those things, so the ball matches up to the foot a little bit better.”
Horton credited both Sauls and Stout for the work they did in the stretch between minicamp and training camp to polish that part of the operation.
“Since he [Sauls] left this spring, he left, he came back, and he’s just hitting balls, straight balls, straight balls, and that’s what we want to see, right? I mean, the guy kicked well last year. He was 8 for 8, so he kicked well.”
And this is what’s making the kicking competition so interesting: The Giants seem to have two good young kickers on their hands. Sauls only missed one kick in Wednesday’s practice (a 45-yard attempt), making 5 of 6 kicks and was also good from 50 and 53 yards.
Ultimately, the Giants find themselves in an uncommon position for NFL teams. Teams generally struggle to trust young specialists, as they’re often in high-leverage situations and the game may depend on them to execute the first time, every time.
Horton believes that trust isn’t necessarily a function of age or experience, so much as built through time and work. The Giants are giving all three of their young specialists — Sauls, Zvada, and long snapper Ben Mann — golden opportunities to earn trust this summer.
“Trust comes with a lot of responsibility, and I think it’s easy,” Horton said. “It’s not because they’re young you have to find a way to trust them. It’s what they do when they’re out there. You build trust through your work. You build trust through your preparation, and the preparation that both these guys are bringing every day. We’re going to have to trust them in the big moments, and we try to put them in those situations so when they go out there, we feel pretty good about it.”