New Orleans Saints head coach Kellen Moore all but circled Charlie Smyth’s name on the depth chart after the rookie’s wild NFL debut in Miami.
Coming off a 56-yard field goal and a perfectly executed onside kick in the 21-17 loss to the Dolphins, Moore said the Irish kicker has “earned the right to continue to kick,” a clear sign Smyth has the inside track on the Saints’ job heading into Week 14.
So, yeah, this isn’t just a fun international story anymore. This is a real kicker decision.
Saints Make Big Kicker Call After 56-Yard Bomb
Moore didn’t hide how he felt about Smyth when asked about the kicking situation on Monday.
He said the Saints “feel really good about Charlie” and that the 24-year-old has “earned the right to continue to kick,” while stressing they’ll let the process “play itself out” over the week. That’s coach-speak for: the rookie is in the lead, and somebody else will have to take the job away from him.
Smyth gave them plenty of reason. He drilled a 56-yard field goal in the fourth quarter—his first regular-season attempt in the NFL—to cut Miami’s lead to one score, then kept the Saints alive with an onside kick “to perfection” that Devaughn Vele recovered near midfield.
It was the exact kind of high-difficulty, high-leverage performance New Orleans has been missing after moving on from struggling kicker Blake Grupe last week.
Moore went on to call the 56-yarder “phenomenal” and raved about the onside kick, adding that Smyth is the kind of guy everyone in the building is rooting for.
What It Means for the Saints’ Kicker Battle
The Saints didn’t stumble into this. They cut Grupe after weeks of misses, then held a late-November kicking competition between Smyth and Cade York, with the Irish rookie earning the start in Miami.
Now he’s 1-for-1 on field goals, perfect on kickoffs and has one of the season’s most eye-popping onside kicks on tape.
Moore did leave himself some wiggle room, saying the Saints will “let it progress” and evaluate as the week goes on. But between the coach’s public praise and the way the locker room responded, it’s hard to read this as anything but Smyth’s job to lose right now.
York is still in the building as a young option the team likes, per Moore, but the momentum—and the fan buzz—is firmly behind the international rookie.
New Orleans is 2-10 and officially out of the playoff picture, which actually makes this decision even more important: the rest of the season doubles as a live audition to see if Smyth can be their long-term answer at a position that’s burned them all year.
Ireland Goes Wild as Smyth Grabs the Spotlight
Smyth isn’t just another camp leg. He’s a former Gaelic football goalkeeper from Mayobridge, Northern Ireland, who reached the Saints through the NFL’s International Player Pathway program and signed a three-year deal with the team in 2024.
He spent all of 2024 on the practice squad, then waited nearly two full seasons for a real shot like this. The patience paid off, both in New Orleans and back home.
In Mayobridge, a local bar packed out for his debut and handed out free pints when he finally got on the board, turning a random Week 13 Saints game into a national moment in Northern Ireland.
Inside the building, Moore even revealed that he and general manager Mickey Loomis had sent Smyth to Dallas earlier this year to work with specialists, trying to squeeze every ounce of development out of his big leg before a chance like this arrived. That investment looked awfully smart in Miami.
Now the Saints head into a four-game stretch—at the Buccaneers, then home dates with the Panthers and Jets before a trip to the Titans—knowing every week is another data point in the Smyth experiment.
If the Irish rookie keeps drilling long balls and stealing possessions with that onside magic, Moore’s “earned the right to continue to kick” line is going to read less like a compliment—and more like the start of a new kicker era in New Orleans.
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