Daniel Carlson on Sunday became the fifth Vikings kicker to try at least three field goals in a game and not make one, according to Pro Football Reference. The circumstances, primarily missing the winner from 35 yards as time expired in overtime, led to the fifth-round draft pick's release Monday.
There's no doubt that the Vikings could have just as easily blamed their punt unit for allowing the Packers to block a punt for a touchdown, or Laquon Treadwell for letting an easy catch go through his hands for an interception.
But the blame fell on Carlson, as it often does when kickers fail in pressure situations. It was a shocking development for a player that the Vikings believed in so much that five months ago they made him the fourth kicker drafted in team history — the first of those four came in the team's expansion season of 1961, when Mike Mercer was selected in the 15th round.
The most recent Vikings kicker to go 0-for-3 in a game before Carlson was Blair Walsh, in a 16-14 loss at Detroit on Dec. 14, 2014. The stakes weren't quite as high as the Vikings were not going to the playoffs following a 2-5 start to the season. But in that game, Walsh had a 26-yarder blocked and a 53-yarder go wide right, and his final miss was a 68-yarder that was short as time expired.
That was Walsh's third season, two years after he was named an All-Pro as a rookie. Of course, he struggled with the Vikings after that, but even after his infamous 27-yard miss in the loss to Seattle in the NFC playoffs at TCF Bank Stadium, he was still brought back for the 2016 season before he was released after nine games and replaced by Kai Forbath.
Even Stenerud missed
Perhaps the most devastating case of a kicker going 0-for-3 on field-goal tries in Vikings history came on Dec. 15, 1985, and the kicker involved was one of football's all-time greats.
Jan Stenerud had two attempts blocked, missed another, and then missed the tying extra point in the fourth quarter as the Vikings fell 14-13 to the Falcons on Dec. 15, 1985, in Atlanta.
That loss eliminated the team from the playoffs, and days later the 43-year-old Stenerud said he would retire. In 1991, the Norwegian became the first pure placekicker to be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.