WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. – The Rams have made a change at kicker, head coach Sean McVay confirmed Tuesday.
Less than 24 hours after McVay said after the game that he would “evaluate everything” when asked about the kicking unit, Los Angeles waived Harrison Mevis on Tuesday and plans to sign Blake Grupe — most recently on the Jets’ practice squad — to replace Mevis.
“I appreciate (Mevis’s) contributions,” McVay said in a video conference with reporters Tuesday evening. “I thought he was a rock for us last year when we obviously struggled in that area. But ultimately we need better production, and that’s what we’re hoping to get out of Blake.”
After the game, McVay said that “in the running game, especially, with our PAT/field goal (unit), not even good enough” and that “it cost us the game.” On Tuesday, McVay said that wasn’t the only reason the Rams didn’t win Monday night and that “I probably should have phrased it better.”
“(Mevis) wasn’t the only reason…It’s the greatest team sport, and I think one of the things that when I look at last night, if I can rephrase what I was saying, is that unity cost us an opportunity to win the game,” McVay said. “That’s not the reason we didn’t win in exclusivity.”
Mevis originally joined the Rams midway through the 2025 season as a replacement for Joshua Karty. That body of work — 12 of 13 made field goals, all 39 extra point attempts in nine regular-season games, plus 6 of 6 field goals and all nine extra points made in three playoff games, including the game-winner against the Bears in the divisional round — led the Rams to tender Mevis as an exclusive rights free agent and effectively retain him as a kicker for 2026 on a one-year deal.
While Mevis made all 14 of his extra point attempts through the first five games of the season, he made just 5 of 9 field goal attempts – all four misses coming from 40+ yards. Two of those misses came in the Rams’ Monday Night Football loss to the Bills, including a missed 50-yard field goal in the first quarter and the potential game-winner from 48 blocked.
While Grupe and current Rams special teams coordinator Bubba Ventrone were both previously with the Colts, their respective stints in Indianapolis did not overlap.
A kicker who initially entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent signed by the Saints in 2023, Grupe spent his first two and a half seasons in New Orleans, making 75 of 94 field goal attempts in 45 games before being released in late November of last year and then signing with the Colts. In five games with Indianapolis, he finished the season 11 of 11 on field goal attempts, with five of those 11 attempts coming from 40+ yards.
“This guy has experience,” McVay said of Grupe. “He did a great job for Indy last year, played in a lot of important professional settings and we felt like he was the best guy available with real playing experience. And you debated, ‘do we want to try to create a competition similar to what we did with Karty and Mevis when we first brought him in?’ And what we thought was really the best thing was to be able to give him the opportunity to come here and do his thing, and hopefully build on the really cool momentum that he had established in Indy. »
Gn headline
