Amidst the breaking news of the Falcons parting ways with Robert Alford, Matt Bryant provided the Twitterverse with a nugget regarding his retirement.
Over this past year I’ve been asked numerous times about retirement and how I feel. Well, I’m not retiring and I feel fine and plan on feeling even better with some changes to my offseason program!
— matt bryant (@Matt_Bryant3) February 6, 2019
The soon to be 44-year old kicker isn’t ready to hang it up quite yet. Before the 2018 season, the Falcons awarded Bryant with a three-year contract extension worth just over $10 million. After the first year of that deal, he’s shown no signs of slowing down.
Bryant hit 20 of his 21 field goal attempts with a long of 57 last season and 33 of his 35 extra point attempts. His 95.2% success rate on field goals was actually the highest of his entire 18-year career. Although, he did suffer a pretty severe hamstring injury, limiting him to only thirteen games.
In his place, Giorgio Tavvecchio started three games and made all five of his field goal attempts and went 8/8 on extra points. I’m sure the Falcons would love to keep Taveccio around for when Bryant finally decides to hang it up, but considering how poor the kickers were last season, it would be shocking to see Taveccio without a starting job come 2019.
Updated: The Falcons have chosen to move on from Matt Bryant, saving the team over $3 million in cap space in 2019. It appears Giorgio Tavecchio will be the starter next season.
#theshowmustgoon pic.twitter.com/J63iycYTSY
— matt bryant (@Matt_Bryant3) February 6, 2019