The Buffalo Bills brought in some competition for struggling kicker Tyler Bass on Thursday, signing Lucas Havrisik to the practice squad.
Bass kicked the decisive 22-yard field goal with 3:43 left in Monday’s 23-20 win against the New York Jets, but he also missed an extra point in the second quarter and a 47-yard field-goal attempt in the third quarter.
The botched PAT appeared to be tipped by the Jets’ Quinnen Willliams, but that didn’t stop play-by-play announcer Joe Buck from roasting Bass on prime-time television.
“No chance. That was just weird. … I’ve seen better kicks than that on ‘College GameDay.’ What the heck was that?” Buck said.
“He knows he needs to make those kicks,” head coach Sean McDermott added after the game. “Bottom line, he knows he needs to make those kicks.”
Bass, 27, has converted nine of 12 field goals and 18 of 20 extra points this season for the Bills (4-2).
Since joining Buffalo as a sixth-round draft pick in 2020, his success rate is 84.1 percent on field goals (116 of 138) and 97.0 percent on PATs (223 of 230).
“T-Bass would be the first to tell you it hasn’t gone the way he would like it,” general manager Brandon Beane said, per the (Rochester, N.Y.) Democrat & Chronicle. “And, quite frankly, the way we like it. But the great thing about Tyler is we’ve had conversations with him. He’s very aware, he knows we’re working out people, and he understands it’s a production business.”
In last season’s 27-24 home loss against the Kansas City Chiefs in a divisional playoff game, Bass missed a potential game-tying 44-yard field goal with 1:43 remaining.
Bass signed a four-year, $20.4 million contract in April 2023 and carries a $4.4 million cap hit this season.
“We have to make decisions, what’s best for the team,” Beane said. “And we want nothing more than Tyler to be our guy. We signed him, he felt he had really earned the deal that we paid him an offseason ago. But it is a production business, and he knows he’s got to make those kicks. I think Sean said that no one’s hiding from it. And so, at the same time, he hasn’t done as well as he or we had hoped. So, we’ve got to continue to look and monitor. And if there’s a better option that we have to turn to, then we’ll do that.”
Havrisik and Harrison Mevis had tryouts with Buffalo on Wednesday.
Havrisik, 25, made his NFL debut last season and played in nine games for the Los Angeles Rams. He made 15 of 20 field-goal attempts with a long of 52 yards and also missed three of his 22 extra-point tries.
