Ben Sauls didn’t do anything spectacular in three games as the New York Giants placekicker at the end of the 2025 season. He just did his job. Perfectly. And it turned him into a bit of a hero in the Giants’ fan base.
Here are a couple of examples:
Quarterback Jaxson Dart is a big fan, too.
“This guy’s incredible. He’s the best kicker I’ve ever seen in my life. This is my favorite guy on the whole team.”
Well, Jaxson, after what Giants fans have witnessed at placekicker the last three seasons they might agree with you.
The placekicking situation has been a disaster.
- Graham Gano, once one of the league’s best kickers and the holder of many Giants kicking records, has played in just 23 of 51 games. He got injured on the opening kickoff in one game, and in pre-game warmups before another.
- Punter Jamie Gillan has had to be an emergency fill-in three times. He has gone 1-for-1 on field goal attempts but missed both of his extra point tries.
- The Giants have used Randy Bullock, Mason Crosby, Greg Joseph, Jude McAtamney (in both 2024 and 2025), and Younghoe Koo as fill-in kickers.
Along the way, losses and embarrassment related to the kicking game have piled up.
- In 2023, Gano missed field goals of 47 and 35 yards, the latter of which would have given the Giants a win over the New York Jets. They lost in overtime, and Gano spent the rest of the season on IR with a knee.
- Bullock was next, kicking for six games and then landing on IR with an injury of his own.
- The 39-year-old Crosby was next. In a Week 17 26-25 loss to the Los Angeles Rams, he missed an extra point and came up woefully short on an attempted 54-yard game-winning field goal with :35 to play.
- In 2024, the Giants lost to the Washington Commanders 21-18 after Gano was injured on the opening kickoff. The Giants failed to convert any extra points or 2-point conversion attempts in the game.
- Greg Joseph kicked fairly well in six games before he got hurt and landed on IR.
- This year, Gano suffered a groin injury in warmups before a Week 3 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.He ended up on IR twice, once for that groin injury and the second time for season-ending neck surgery.
- McAtamney kicked for four weeks, missing three extra points in two games. Two of those misses came in a one-point loss to the Denver Broncos.
- Younghoe Koo had the infamous stubbed toe/stopped kick that ended up with Gillan, the holder and punter, injuring a knee and missing a game.
Then, along came Sauls.
The Giants added Sauls to their practice squad on Nov. 11, and brought him to the active roster for the final three games of the season to replace Koo. Sauls went 8 for 8 on field goals with a long kick of 45 yards, and 7 of 7 on extra points.
“I think the body of work we were able to put together was pretty fantastic,” Sauls said. “That’s the job, right? Making kicks. We made all of our kicks. Hopefully I just proved that I can do it and get an opportunity to do it again next year.”
Sauls said his experience with the Giants was “amazing.”
“I felt good,” Sauls said last week as Giants players were packing to head into the offseason. “I’m not going to sit here and say I deserved an opportunity, but I was happy, whether it was right place, right time, or God’s plan for me, whatever it may have been, brought me here on week 15 to have an opportunity to play football again. It felt amazing.”
After a career at Pittsburgh that saw him make 52 of 64 field goals (81.3%) and 122 of 124 extra points (98.4%) Sauls went undrafted. The 24-year-old spent the preseason with the Pittsburgh Steelers and then was on the Atlanta Falcons’ practice squad for a few weeks before coming to the Giants.
“I had a very unique regular season,” Sauls said. “I was at home with my parents for four weeks. I was in Atlanta for seven, and then I came here. When you have all sorts of that perspective of how rare it is and how hard it is to be here and stay, it was pretty surreal.
“Every single day you’re thinking to yourself, will I get an opportunity to play again? Like I said, for whatever reason, it worked out with the Giants. I knew that if I was going to get an opportunity, I wasn’t going to waste it.”
Sauls didn’t waste it.
Casey Kreiter, the Giants’ 10-year veteran long-snapper, said that Sauls has “got the right attitude.”
“I think the kicks were the kicks and the results were the results, but I think his work ethic is something that stood out, and his willingness just to kind of adjust and then work with us,” Kreiter said. “Obviously, being a lefty kicker, I think he wasn’t naive to the fact that there’s not a whole lot of them in the NFL, and he did such a great job of just letting us know what he needs for his success, but also just kind of going with the flow, and if things weren’t perfect, hey, listen, we’ll figure it out when we get there.
“And I think when you look historically at the position, the best batteries do that.If someone’s a little off, the other guys pick them up, and I think that’s a key to long-term success in this league, whether it’s lefty, righty, whatever it is.”
Kreiter said it was “completely different” to look back and see the kicker standing on the opposite side of what he had been used to his entire career. That wasn’t the only change.
“I think it’s just the operation as a whole, right? The holder’s catching it from a different side of his body than he’s used to, probably than he’s done his entire career. So that may change where he catches the ball,” Kreiter said.
“And it took some time, just lots and lots of reps. As the season goes on, like, you know, we’re all kind of hanging on at the end of an NFL football season, so you can’t get as many reps as you might in OTAs and training camps. So, again, I think that was just kind of a testament to Jamie [Gillan] and Ben, just saying, hey, we’re going to get the work we can get in, make it quality, and we’re just going to go with the flow. Whatever happens, happens. And it was awesome.”
Sauls credited the professionalism of Gillan and Kreiter.
“When I got here, they were like, we’re just going to figure it out. You don’t worry about it. We’re going to figure it out,” Sauls said. “And that’s what they did. They showed up every day with a smile, and I know that it’s not easy because I’ve seen people try and do it.
“I’ve seen people for years do it, and they did it at such a high level. People don’t realize that. To the naked eye of a fan watching our games, they don’t realize how difficult that is, and they did it perfectly.”
Sauls’ longest kick in his three-game stint was a 48-yard extra point.
“I never know the distances, to be completely honest with you,” Sauls said. “I just know when I’m like, ooh, this is pretty far. “But yeah, I like to kick the deep ones. I think I was lucky to start my career off with some solid, for lack of better terms, gimmies.
“They’re never gimmies, but for some solid shorter kicks, that builds your confidence. But yeah, next season I’m looking forward to kicking some deep ones. But you’re never like, ooh, this is 58. You just think, oh, this is a good ways.”
Sauls did says he was a little “jealous” of guys like Brandon Aubrey of the Dallas Cowboys or Cam Little of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Little has the two longest field goals in NFL history, 68 and 67 yards.
I asked Sauls if something like a 62-yard kick was in his repertoire.
“Like any kicker will tell you, 62 is a big ball. But do we have that? Yeah, we’ve got that,” Sauls said. “I don’t think we’re going to be doing routine 62-yard field goals. But if the opportunity presents itself where we need one, yeah, we’ll get it there.”
That’s something for Giants fans to look forward to.
See More:
