Caleb Sturgis knew it wasn’t good news.
He felt his quad tightening up during pregame warmups as the Eagles began the 2017 season on the road in Washington, and then when he booted the opening kickoff, there was no doubt. Sturgis had strained that quad before so he recognized the feeling and knew what the injury was right away. Sturgis finished the game and made all three of his field goals but he was heading for IR.
What no one knew at the time was that it was Sturgis’s last game as an Eagle.
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A 22-year-old kid from the Bengals’ practice squad was soon going to board a flight from Cincinnati to Philly and never leave.
That kid was Jake Elliott.
And six years later, he’s well on his way to being the greatest kicker in Eagles history.
“I definitely have to pinch myself in regards to that and how everything kind of worked out for the best,” Elliott said this week. “Maybe it was a good learning experience for me and kicked me off on the right foot. It was a great landing spot for me and I hope to be here for a long time.”
NFL
On Wednesday, Elliott was named the NFC Special Teams Player of the Week for the second time in four weeks to start the 2023 season after drilling a 54-yarder in overtime to beat the Commanders. It was just the latest clutch kick on his impressive resume. If he’s not already the best kicker in franchise history — that honor has been owned by David Akers for a long time — many expect him to get there in the not-too-distant future.
And everything had to work out perfectly for Elliott to land and stay in Philly.
Better to be lucky than good
How close were the Eagles to never having a chance to sign Elliott?
Maybe just a couple of feet.
In the Bengals’ preseason finale in 2017, Elliott lined up for a 60-yard field goal with 2 seconds left in a one-point game. A make would have given the Bengals a win over the Colts. While Elliott had plenty of leg, he hooked it just wide left. If he makes that kick, he might have won the competition.
Instead, the Bengals decided that journeyman Randy Bullock deserved to be their kicker over Elliott, their fifth-round pick out of Memphis.
“I couldn’t believe that Randy had beaten him out,” Sturgis said to NBC Sports Philadelphia this week. “Any time in those competitions if it’s even, you’re going to go with the guy you drafted.”
That was the Bengals’ thought at the time too.
"There's a lot of data, a lot more data than you're aware of," then-Bengals head coach Marvis Lewis explained in 2017, via ESPN. "So we have to go by that or else there's no reason to keep track of everything we do. Obviously, if it was anything close, Jake would have won the job.”
The Bengals went into that season with Bullock as their kicker and Elliott on their practice squad, ripe for poaching. He didn’t last there long.
When Sturgis went down in Week 1, the Eagles brought in several veterans for a workout. But since Sturgis was in the final year of his contract anyway, they figured signing a young player like Elliott might give them a chance to fix the position long-term.
After all, they watched that 60-yarder in the preseason go juuuust wide left and with plenty of leg.
They were also impressed by Elliott’s career at Memphis, where the Illinois native showed an ability to connect with his teammates far from home. They knew he wasn’t just a kicker but was a multi-sport athlete. And they knew how many kickers, including Akers in Philly, had thrived in their second NFL stop.
So aware that it was a three-week commitment to poach a player off another team’s practice squad, they signed Elliott on Sept. 12, 2017.
“Honestly, it was such a whirlwind, I was just kind of going with the flow,” Elliott said. “I just remember packing a bag quick, I was on a flight that night and I was here the next day at practice. It was a quick whirlwind. I’m just glad it all worked out and I’m here.”
Elliott’s arrival in Philly
Sturgis wasn’t sure what to expect when Elliott got to town. He was ready for anything.
“It’s funny in that position too,” Sturgis said. “It’s not like a wide receiver, where it’s like, ‘Oh, I’ll play across from you.’ It’s you or him. So you never know how it’s going to go. I’ve been around kickers who are really friendly right away, guys who aren’t. Jake was super friendly right away.”
Long-snapper Rick Lovato remembers Elliott showing up as a quiet rookie, who acclimated to the group of specialists pretty quickly.
That season, it was Lovato, Sturgis and punter Donnie Jones. Elliott became a fourth member of that group and wasn’t territorial.
“He was never pushy about anything,” Lovato said. “We would be in the players lounge and he would just embrace being part of our team and even when Caleb was there and he was hurt, [Elliott] would just be there and try to fit his way into the group. He was always very friendly, very nice. We just remember him putting his head down and doing his own thing.”
Maybe Elliott wasn’t overly territorial because of his confidence.
That was one of the first things Sturgis recognized about the rookie.
“I was definitely blown away by how confident he was coming in and how polished he was,” Sturgis said. “He had just lost another job and I was wondering if he was going to be up and down when he came in.”
It was understandable to wonder if Elliott was going to have confidence issues because that’s such an important part of being a kicker. And despite being a fifth-round pick he had just lost a battle with Bullock, who was on his fifth team in two years.
But Elliott never wavered.
“At the end of the day, I still feel like I kicked the ball pretty well when I was there,” Elliott said. “The other guy was just really, really good. He had a great camp, great competition. I felt like I was able to remain confident because I was hitting the ball well still. Coming into a new spot, it was kind of a fresh start as well so I could start from zero. Kind of have no bad memories in my mind, just start fresh here.”
The moment that changed everything
When Sturgis got hurt in the opener, his plan was to rehab and return that season. After all, he was coming off a career year in 2016, when he made a career-best 85.4% of his field goal attempts and was 4 for 6 from 50-plus.
But the moment Sturgis realized he wasn’t getting the job back was the same moment the Eagles realized they had found their long-term kicker.
That 61-yard game-winner against the Giants changed everything.
“We knew what he could do in practice,” Lovato said. “He was very consistent and all that. But when we saw how big his leg was in that game with the pressure on him, we were like, ‘OK, we found our guy for the year,’ and now the last seven years we’ve been together. It’s been amazing the road that we’ve been on.”
The crazy thing about that 61-yarder is that if Elliott doesn’t make it, the whole trajectory of the Super Bowl season and his career might be incredibly different.
In Elliott’s first game that season, he went 2 for 3 against the Chiefs in a loss and his miss was from 30 yards out. And in the Giants game, he was 1-for-2 with a miss from 52 before lining up for that 61-yarder with 1 second left.
This time, unlike in the preseason finale, he nailed the kick. The Eagles improved to 2-1 and that defining moment helped jump-start their run to Super Bowl LII.
If Elliott misses that kick?
The Eagles would have been 1-2 and Elliott’s future might have been in jeopardy.
“You go 3-for-6, even though that last one’s 61 and it shouldn’t count, but you’re sitting at 50%, it doesn’t look great,” Sturgis said. “So I knew that as good of a kicker as he was, some guys just get the short end of the stick based on where their kicks come from, how they play out early. But he hits that and kind of goes lights-out after that.”
Staying power
Since his arrival to Philadelphia in 2017, Elliott has drilled a ton of big kicks and has been incredibly reliable. He was 3-for-3 in Super Bowl LII and his 46-yarder late in the fourth quarter to put the Eagles up by 8 points in that game is one of the biggest kicks in franchise history.
As his teammates and coaches will tell you, there’s ice water in his veins.
“His composure level has always been through the roof,” Lovato said. “You never see him shaking in his boots on the sideline. It’s always the same level from the first quarter to the fourth quarter. There’s no ups, there’s no downs. He just always keeps his head still and is like, ‘All right, I’m going to hit this ball and put it through the uprights.’
“He’s got a fantastic goldfish type mindset. You make it, move on to the next and completely forget about the last one. He’s always been that way and that’s why he’s still here to this day, because he does have that mindset.”
Elliott, now 28, has made all 15 of his field goal attempts in the playoffs, he was a Pro Bowler in 2021 and he is the most accurate kicker in franchise history and the 10th-most accurate kicker in NFL history among players with at least 100 attempts.
This season, partially as a function of a sometimes inefficient offense, Elliott is off to the best start in his career. He has made 13 of 14 attempts, including 4 of 5 from 50-plus.
And it all started with a quad injury six years ago.
Sturgis never kicked again for the Eagles even though he was healed up from that quad injury in about six weeks and he still enjoyed the Super Bowl run. The following season, in 2018, he played in six games with the Chargers but hasn’t played in the NFL since. As Sturgis looks back at his career, his fondest memories in the league were in Philadelphia.
And even though he became the Wally Pipp to Elliott’s Lou Gehrig, he holds no ill will. He still roots for his former club, his former teammates and even the guy who took his job and never looked back.
“I would have loved to have a 10-, 15-year career with the Eagles,” Sturgis said. “I think it’s a super special organization. Couldn’t say enough great things about the owner Mr. Lurie and everything. Selfishly, I wish my tenure would have been longer. But at the same time, super proud of Jake and super impressed every time I turn on the TV.”
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