COSTA MESA — Younghoe Koo hasn’t won the Chargers any games yet, but at least for now, he will keep his job.
After leaving the door slightly ajar for a kicking competition following Sunday’s 19-17 loss to Miami, Coach Anthony Lynn reaffirmed his confidence in the undrafted rookie — a former Lou Groza Award finalist who is now 1 for 4 on NFL field-goal attempts.
“Koo’s our kicker, ” Lynn said Monday. “He competed well all training camp. He kicked well in Denver. He got one blocked. This is the first time he’s had a bad day.”
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The Chargers have started 0-2, with losses to the Broncos and the Dolphins both ending on Koo’s misses from 44 yards away. But Koo’s late attempt in Denver last Monday was blocked, giving the team reason to view his struggles as an isolated incident rather than a disturbing pattern.
During training camp, Koo beat out incumbent Josh Lambo, who converted 81.3 percent of his field-goal attempts in two years as the Chargers’ kicker. Koo made 19 of 20 field-goal attempts during his final season at Georgia Southern in 2016, the only blemish coming on a 54-yard try.
Koo was less steady as a junior in 2015, missing from 31 and 37 yards. All three of his collegiate misses flew wide right — the same issue that plagued him in Sunday’s home opener.
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“He’s very confident, ” Lynn said, “and I have to give him the benefit of the doubt, after being around him the whole offseason and watching how he competed and how he took that job. He went out and had a bad day yesterday, but we’re still riding with him. And we’re hoping that he’ll bounce back.”
Resurgences are not uncommon at the position. Across town, Rams kicker Greg Zuerlein entered the 2016 season on thin ice, but rebounded with a sterling showing — only missing from 48 yards (twice) and 55 yards. He is one of two NFL kickers this fall still perfect after at least five field goals and five extra points.
Former Pro Bowler Cody Parkey opened the 2016 season with the Browns, and missed three field-goal attempts in a six-point loss to the Dolphins in Week 3. After Cleveland cut him earlier this month in favor of rookie Zane Gonzalez, Miami plucked him off waivers — and watched him nail four field goals against the Chargers on Sunday, including a 54-yarder for the final lead.
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The former Pro Bowler was on the field for 63 out of 69 possible defensive snaps in last Monday’s season-opening loss in Denver, but missed two practices last week and was left inactive at StubHub Center. Lynn said that Verrett did not sustain a new injury to his knee, but declined to disclose the results of an MRI the cornerback had last week.
“It was never was right in my opinion, just watching him in practice, ” Lynn said. “But he’s such a competitor, he kept wanting to go out, save himself and play the first week. But he wasn’t able to play to his standard. So we just want him to get healthy. … I just don’t see a guy being able to change directions the way he’s done in the past.”
There is currently no firm timetable for Verrett’s return. The 26-year-old is among the best in the league when healthy, but has only appeared in 25 games since the Chargers drafted him at No. 25 overall in 2014.
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Starting right tackle Joe Barksdale left Sunday’s game with a foot injury, but Lynn expects him to be ready to play Kansas City this weekend.NFL teams had to reduce their rosters from the training camp limit of 90 players to 53 on Saturday, meaning a lot of players saw their dreams dashed. There will be dozens more moves made in the days ahead as teams pick up a player or two who was let go by a different club.
But a lot of players see their dreams come true on this day. One of them is a most unlikely NFL player, a 5-foot-9, South Korean born former soccer standout who didn’t really learn how to speak English until he was 12 years old.
A decade after coming to the United States from South Korea and picking up football as a way to make friends, Younghoe Koo is the Chargers kicker. (AP)
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Koo, an All-Sun Belt Conference kicker at Georgia Southern, moved to New Jersey with his family in sixth grade. In a profile by the Bergen Record’s Tara Sullivan just after signing with the Los Angeles Chargers as an undrafted rookie, Koo says his first weeks at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, N.J. were lonely – he didn’t understand the customs or the language, and worst of all, he didn’t have any friends.
He’d played soccer in South Korea, but tried American football, where he could put those skills to work as a kicker, though he also was an all-county defensive back at Ridgewood High, grabbing six interceptions as a senior.
Koo made 6-of-8 field goals as a senior, and also converted all 32 extra point tries; in his career at the school, he put 47 of 50 kickoffs into the end zone for touchbacks. He was offered a scholarship to play at Georgia Southern.
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As a senior at Georgia Southern, Koo lined up for 20 field goals and made all but one (his miss was from 54 yards), and also made 28-of-29 extra points. He was a finalist for the Lou Groza Award, given to the nation’s best kicker, and a third-team All-American.
When the Chargers signed Koo, they already had Josh Lambo on the roster. Lambo was the Chargers’ kicker in 2015 and 2016, but both seasons he was 26-for-32 on field goals (81.3 percent), and missed eight total extra points.
Koo beat out Lambo, who was released on Saturday. He is the fourth South Korean-born player in NFL history, following kicker John Lee, who was with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1986, former Steelers star Hines Ward (his mother is Korean), and current Carolina Panthers defensive tackle Kyle Love, whose father was stationed in the country with the Army when he was born.There is John Lee, an All-America kicker at UCLA whose NFL career lasted 11 games. There is Hines Ward, the five-time Pro Bowl receiver who spent the first months of his life in Seoul. There is Kyle Love, the Panthers defensive tackle whose father was a U.S. Army colonel once stationed in South Korea.
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The Chargers have made Younghoe Koo the newest member of this small club. On Saturday, they added the rookie kicker to their 53-man active roster — and in doing so, pushed the all-time list of Korean-born NFL players up to four.
For Koo, who immigrated to New Jersey just before middle school, the journey has been dizzying. A stranger to football when he arrived on American shores, he picked up the game during a lunch recess in seventh grade. At Ridgewood High, he also became an all-county defensive back — relishing those duties even though his future lay in kicking.
Eventually, he earned a scholarship to Georgia Southern, becoming a Lou Groza Award finalist as well as the school’s first-ever FBS All-American. He went undrafted, as most kickers do, but got himself on the scouting radar. In late April, the Chargers signed him to compete with incumbent starter Josh Lambo — only 81.3 percent on field-goal attempts in the last two seasons.
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“Amazing, ” Koo said. “I don’t really know how to put it into words, really. I don’t even know how to describe my feelings at that moment. It’s sunk in a little more. All kinds of emotions hit me. But after a few hours, it sunk in.”
Perhaps it was destiny. The Chargers have now signed at least one undrafted rookie to their active roster in 21 consecutive seasons. They did so this year in a flurry, keeping Koo along with running back Austin Ekeler (Western State Colorado), tight end Sean Culkin (Missouri), and linebackers Nigel Harris (South Florida) and James Onwualu (Notre Dame).
Koo hasn’t had time to celebrate with his parents yet. His father, Hyungseo Koo, is a professor at Induk University in Seoul. His mother, Seungmin Choi, is a nurse in Georgia. Theirs is a sprawling immigrant experience, spread across a 15-hour time difference.
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But in another sense, he’ll hardly be alone. The Greater Los Angeles Area is home to more than 200, 000 Korean immigrants, the largest such diaspora in the United States. At least some of them will tune in a little more attentively on Sundays.
Chargers coach Anthony Lynn said Tuesday that all of his starters are healthy enough to play in the season opener in Denver — except middle linebacker Denzel Perryman, who landed on injured reserve on Monday.
Dontrelle Inman, bumped down to a backup role after catching for 810 yards last season, is day-to-day in his recovery from offseason sports hernia surgery. The receiver has been in and out of practices since undergoing the operation in May.
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The Chargers will spend 12 hours on Wednesday hosting a food-and-supply drive in Los Angeles, collecting
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