Will
Reichard.
Will
Reichard.
Alabama· 6'1"· 187 lb
"The safest leg in the class: five years of Alabama pressure, near-perfect extra points and a kickoff gun, wrapped in a Day 3 price tag."Pre-draft read
Five-year Alabama starter who kicked in the biggest environments college football offers and treated them like a Tuesday practice. Compact, repeatable operation: short approach, quiet plant foot, level shoulders through contact, and a strike that stays on the same low, boring line whether the snap is clean or a tick late.
The separator is the kickoff leg and the mind under a full stadium. He drove touchbacks at will as a senior and doubled as an emergency punter, so a roster can carry one fewer specialist. Range is real without being freakish — comfortable to the mid-40s in games — and the miss pattern is short rather than wide, meaning the errors are honest and coachable.
Any operation that values a fifth-year-senior temperament over raw leg talent, especially a cold-weather team that needs touchbacks and 45-and-in certainty.
Year 1: uncontested starting kicker with full kickoff duties. Ceiling: top-five percentage kicker and an All-Pro leg.
A dome roster built around a 55-plus bomber that grades kickers on raw distance instead of make rate.
His value is the absence of drama, not the size of the leg.
Will Reichard 2020 Highlights | Alabama
Perfect 14-for-14 field goal season as a sophomore.
Will Reichard 2023 Highlights | Alabama K
Senior year: 22-of-25 on field goals and heavy touchback volume.
Will Reichard Highlights from 2025 NFL Season
All-Pro season with the Vikings, including the franchise-record 62-yarder.
A true five-year specialist with the resume of a program cornerstone rather than a camp body. Reichard won the Alabama job as a true freshman in 2019, played only five games that fall through injury, then never left the field again, finishing as the all-time FBS scoring leader with 547 points. That kind of tenure at that address is its own evaluation.
The production holds up to scrutiny. He was 84 of 100 on field goals and 295 of 297 on extra points across 60 games, including a perfect 14-for-14 season in 2020 and an 88.0 percent senior year on 25 attempts. He also handled kickoffs at a high level, with 52 touchbacks on 87 kicks in 2023, and punted four times when Alabama needed a body. The flags were modest: a low-volume 2019, a 78.6 percent junior year, and a career that never demanded a heavy diet of 50-plus tries, so the deep range was projected more than proven.
Boards had him as the top kicker in the class and a rare specialist worth real Day 3 capital, with most projections landing in the sixth or seventh round. Minnesota, coming off a season of unstable kicking, spent pick 203 on the safest leg available. For a team that needed the position solved rather than auditioned, it was the correct use of a late selection.
- 01
Operation under pressure
Five years of SEC and playoff kicking with no visible drop in tempo or strike quality when the game situation tightened.
- 02
Mechanical repeatability
Short, controlled approach with a quiet plant foot and level shoulders, producing the same low, boring ball flight rep after rep.
- 03
Extra-point automation
295 of 297 career PATs, a near-perfect baseline that removes the cheapest source of variance from an offense's scoring math.
- 04
Kickoff leg
52 touchbacks on 87 kicks as a senior at a 63.75-yard average, giving a coordinator real control over starting field position.
- 05
Emergency punting
Handled four punts in 2023 at a 41.3 average, roster flexibility that lets a team carry one fewer specialist on gameday.
- 01
Unproven deep range
Alabama's offense rarely asked him to try 50-plus kicks, so the long-distance projection rested on warmups and pro day rather than live tape.
- 02
Junior-year dip
22 of 28 in 2021 was the one stretch where the strike drifted, and the misses clustered on kicks he had made comfortably the year before.
- 03
Thin freshman sample
An injury limited him to five games and seven attempts in 2019, leaving a gap in the early-career resume evaluators had to project through.
- 04
Specialist ceiling
Even the best version of the position caps roster value, and any late-round kicker is one cold month from an open tryout.
| Yr | Team | G | FGM | FGA | FG% | XPM | XPA | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Alabama | 5 | 4 | 7 | 57.1 | 21 | 22 | 33 |
| 2020 | Alabama | 13 | 14 | 14 | 100 | 84 | 84 | 126 |
| 2021 | Alabama | 15 | 22 | 28 | 78.6 | 71 | 72 | 137 |
| 2022 | Alabama | 13 | 22 | 26 | 84.6 | 64 | 64 | 130 |
| 2023 | Alabama | 14 | 22 | 25 | 88 | 55 | 55 | 121 |
| Career | — | 60 | 84 | 100 | 84 | 295 | 297 | 547 |
Verified against cfbstats.com season pages (2020-2023) and the FBS career totals; season sums match the career line exactly (84/100 FG, 295/297 XP, 547 points, 60 games). NCAA FBS all-time scoring leader. Also punted 4 times for 165 yards (41.25 avg) in 2023.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Young, cheap, automatic inside 50 with enough range to matter on kickoffs.
Same profile of quiet mechanics and elite make rate maturing into an All-Pro leg.
Highly regarded college kicker whose accuracy fell apart against NFL variance.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Minnesota handed him the job immediately and never blinked. As a rookie in 2024 he went 24 of 30 on field goals with a perfect 38-for-38 on extra points and 62 touchbacks, missing time with a quad injury but returning to close the year as the starter across 13 games. In 2025 he was the best version of himself: 33 of 35 on field goals at 94.3 percent, 31 of 31 on extra points, a franchise-record 62-yarder against Cincinnati, and first-team All-Pro honors. He enters 2026 as the Vikings' unquestioned kicker heading into year three.
In hindsight this is one of the tidiest picks of the round. The knock at the time was range, and he answered it by making the longest kick in franchise history and posting a 94 percent season in a cold-weather division. The broader lesson is about profile over position value: a five-year Power Five starter with near-perfect PAT numbers and a kickoff leg is a different animal from the usual Day 3 specialist flier. Minnesota bought certainty at the cheapest price on the board and got an All-Pro out of it.
Data note: Verified against cfbstats.com season pages (2020-2023) and the FBS career totals; season sums match the career line exactly (84/100 FG, 295/297 XP, 547 points, 60 games). NCAA FBS all-time scoring leader. Also punted 4 times for 165 yards (41.25 avg) in 2023.