A surprising move coming from a team that I thought had a great Kicker/Punter. The Philadelphia Stars have officially signed Kicker/Punter Luis Aguilar to their active roster. Let's discuss that;
The announcement came in the form of a Twitter post late Wednesday Night where the Stars announced the signing of a new specialist. This is surprising seeing as their kicker Matt Mengel had one of the best statistical performances of any USFL Kicker this season in week 4. Mengel single-handedly helped his team in their 26-25 win last week against Michigan, when he went 4 for 5 on field goal attempts and 2 for 2 on PATs. He scored a League Record 14 points in this single game and through 4 games he has scored the third-most points by any kicker (26).
And the Stars decided to move on... right when Matt was getting into his groove. If you discount week 1's statistics (which is commonplace due to an issue with trackers in the balls) Mengel was 5 for 8 on field goal attempts (62%) and 6 for 7 on PATs (85%). The only knock I could see the Stars giving him was he wasn't punting as well as they would have liked. The issue with that is Mengel was sitting right about league average for both Average Yards per Punt (40.2) and Net Average Yards per Punt (36.5). Personally, I think it was a bone-headed decision to cut Matt but we will have to wait and see what happens moving forward.
So who is next to try their foot with the USFL? Meet Kicker/Punter Luis Aguilar out of Northern Arizona University.
Luis Aguilar played with the Lumberjacks for 5 years (2017-2021) as both a placekicker and punter. Through those 5 years, Aguilar connected on 36 of his 46 field goal attempts (78%) and 115-of-117 extra points. This comes with a long of 57 yards back in 2019. What's interesting is that 2019 was his last season of kicking consistently for the Lumberjacks, as after that season, he would only appear in 7 more of the 24 games
Here's another interesting thing, Luis hasn't punted since 2019 and has only punted 20... yes 20 times in his entire career. His punts were nothing to write home about either if we're being honest. He punted for an average of 35.3 yards per punt, which is way below the USFL's League Average of 43.7 yards per punt. Not sure firing Mengel was the right move...
The new Stars kicker will take to the field on Sunday, May 15th when they take on the undefeated Birmingham Stallions.
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