The New York Giants were supposed to have a veteran kicker under first-year veteran head coach John Harbaugh.
But Dominic Zvada wrested control of the team’s kicker position as one of the surprising of the offseason.
ESPN beat reporter Jordan Ranaan named Zvada, the undrafted rookie from Michigan, as the Giants‘ biggest surprise of the offseason ahead of training camp, which starts in less than a month.
Zvada is just 22, and his last made kick in a game came against the University of Texas in the Citrus Bowl. Still, he is No. 1 on the depth chart entering training camp at The Greenbrier in White Sulpher Springs, West Virginia next month.
Dominic Zvada has Opened Eyes This Offseason
GettyDominic Zvada has shot to the top of the Giants’ kicking depth chart ahead of training camp.
Undrafted players rarely make NFL rosters, especially in a three-headed placekicker duel, but Zvada is in the process of making it happen.
Zvada unseated both veteran former Miami Dolphins kicker Jason Sanders and incumbent Ben Sauls to move to the top of the depth chart. Sanders was released earlier this spring, in a surprising move that affirmed Zvada’s progress.
“Zvada, an undrafted free agent, went into this spring basically as the No. 3 kicker,” Ranaan wrote for ESPN.com Monday. “Veteran Jason Sanders was considered the favorite this season. But before the spring was even over, Sanders was cut and Zvada became the front-runner ahead of Ben Sauls.”
The 6-3, 178-pound kicker, who started his college career at Arkansas State before transferring to Michigan, has the credentials. He was the 2024 Big Ten Kicker of the Year and an All-American in his junior season, and is hoping to stabilize a long-troubled position of Giants kickers.
New York finished tied for 28th in the NFL in made field goals last year (23) and was last in extra-point percentage (87.8%) in 2025. Plus, he has been good at the right time, according to Ranaan.
“It probably helped that the media didn’t see Zvada miss this spring,” Ranaan wrote, “and he went 13-for-13 on field goal attempts at minicamp.”
The Giants Could Still Have a Different Kicker in 2026
GettyVeteran kicker Daniel Carlson is a free agent that is still available.
Competition has been the watch word under Harbaugh in 2026. So even though Zvada is on top of the depth chart, he absolutely will need to keep performing to stay atop the Giants’ kicker depth chart.
Sanders was supposed to be No. 1 kicker, until Zvada outperformed him. So it would only take an injury our bout of inconsistency — or even a change in Harbaugh’s opinion — for a kicker like Daniel Carlson to be on the roster.
Carlson is by far the best-available kicker on the open market right now, but he’s not the only one. The Giants surely won’t go down the Graham Gano hole again after being burned in consecutive seasons, but former Giants kicker Brandon McManus and Matt Prater are both free agents right now.
So Zvada is the favorite to be the Week 1 kicker right now, but much can change between now and 8:20 p.m. ET on Sept. 13, when the Giants open their year against the Dallas Cowboys.
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