Long time kicker released by Frankfurt Galaxy

[Marco_Frankfurt]

In a surprising move K Erik Kastle was released today, just after the Galaxys season ended once more without a trip to the playoffs.

Erik Kastle holds the reords for most XPs attempted and completed as well as most points scored.

His record setting career started with the 2002 season when he was selected for the Rhein Fire at 3rd place in the round 3 by legendary GM Miguel Cuadron. In his rookie season he was the most accurate FG-kicker in the league with 84.6%. Then after week 3 of the 2004 season he was part of one of the huge trades the two GMs from Rhein and frankfurt often initiated:

K Josef Meier, DE Ingmar Gronheim, LB Jon Hesse and CB Elbert Allen (Frankfurt) for K Erik Kastle, DT Sid Kesey, LB Matt Finkes and CB Gary Richard (Rhein)

Actually Mr Cuadron did approach GM Lambert with the folowing first line: "I think you need a better K and I can offer you one !" and Frankfurt was happy to get this outstanding player. Over the seasons he became Frankfurts top scorer and also did set a season record of most XPs made and attempted in the 2009 season (the best year in offense ever for the Galaxy and maybe the whole league). He played in 4 FWL Bowls (1 with Rhein 3 with Frankfurt) and got the ring 2 times (2009 and 2010). All star he was selected in 2008 and 2009.

In recent years he was under fire from the media for missing critical FGs and in the last season he completed only 53.6% of his FG attempts. However he still was 100% below 40 yards so some blame his bad completion percentage on the inability of the Galaxy Offense to move the ball.

GM Lambert gave the following statement:
"It is allways sad to see such a great player leave the team, however a player with his age is impossible to trade, so we all hope he can find a new team if he is available for free. He certainly deserves it to continue his great career. At the same time we have to look foreward and after missing the playoffs we have to find new talent for our team and therefore we need roster space. We wish Erik all the best for his hopefully long continuing career."


Erik Kastle in his 12th season is still one of the best kickers as his ratings show:
A  K1         Kastle, Erik             OK    12     76 75 76 94 68 78 78 99
it would be a shame to not sign him as a free agent, now he is available.


His complete Career Statistics are (thanks for that to Andrew Battye):

Scoring Offense
1182 points

Rushing
10 carries for -59 yards (-5.9 average), Longest -4, 0 TDs

Extra Points
417 attempts, 408 successful (97.8%)

Defense
32 tackles, 0 sacks

Field Goals
387 attempts, 258 successful (66.7%), 51 Long

[Paul-London]

Yes a great kicker...

http://www.fwl.org.uk/career.htm#T14

Currently the all time scorer in the league, might have one more year left in him.

Last 3 years...

63%, 53%, 53% he has really gone downhill and has ranked as the lowest kicker or next to lowest in each of those years but a great veteran and one of the best kickers ever in his prime.  Has the most XP's of any kicker ever in the league, 4th most FG's of all time and most points of all time with 1182

[Andrew-Neutral]

On the subject of kickers, it is shame that the stats database can not work out things like streaks of successfull kicks. You can look at the games week-by-week to see a column of 100% games - but you can't quite work out when a streak starts or ends. Shame.

Also, the database does not break down field goals attempts by distance (eg. less than 20, 20 to 29, 30 to 39, etc). The new version of Sundby's GAMESTAT program does provide this, but it contains other bugs. If we were to update to GAMESTAT 98, I'd have to rewrite masses of the database site to accommodate the new stats and I don't want to do that, and all the stats from the 18 seasons of games would have to be rebuilt using the new program. But, the biggest problem would be getting Paul to pay $5 for the new program  - only joking. $5 is worth about 38p these days, with the exchange rate favouring the UK so much.

[Paul-London]

Yeah pity that.

When i have time i could do a search under some of the big name kickers to check for a 100% streak and see when it ends (as long as its a long streak, not going to do every small streak !) as that would be interesting.

[Marco_Frankfurt]

Andrew, I dont know how your database is build but could you not just sum up the season values for Kicks over distance ? At least for career stats. I was searching for it when I did write the article for Kastle. It would have been nice to see how good the completion percentage for each distance would have been.

However your database is fantastic as I found out what game he first play for me comming from Rhein and a lot of other usefull stuff.

[Andrew-Neutral]

Hi Marco,

The database takes a file of stats every week, and the field goal stats only include Attempts, Made and Longest. The file does not split down the kicks by length.

I could read in the career stats from Paul's site, but this only lists the top 20 kickers and I would want them all!

[Paul-London]

I can try doing a file by every player for career.htm if you want, might be quite large !

[Andrew-Neutral]

I think it would be easier if I trawled through the files I have made from all the play-by-plays. Of course, two games are missing from the play-by-play archive which could screw things up!

[Marco_Frankfurt]

I dont know the details, but would it not be easier to take every seasons teamstats ?
Or had we too often a Kicker released during the season, so he is no longer shown for a team ?

[Niki]

it is simple just under career stats you have the compl per distance (http://www.fwl.org.uk/career.htm#T13)

<20 11/15
20-29 82/89
30-39 84/115
40-49 62/128
50+ 19/37