Anthony Rivardo
Dominic Zvada made all 13 of his field-goal attempts at the Giants’ mandatory minicamp, connecting from 53, 56, and 60 yards with room to spare, then went a perfect 8-for-8 in a separate session held in front of reporters. Ben Sauls finished the same three-day event 7-of-14, with nearly every miss leaking wide left.
Those two stat lines reframed a competition the Giants thought they had already simplified. What opened the offseason as a three-man race is now a two-man referendum, and the undrafted rookie is the one applying the pressure heading into camp at The Greenbrier.
How the Race Flipped in One Spring
The Giants entered the spring with three kickers: Sauls, veteran Jason Sanders, and Zvada, the undrafted Michigan product signed on April 25. Sanders, a former All-Pro who spent eight seasons with the Dolphins, has since been released, leaving a clean head-to-head.
John Harbaugh made clear the June results settle nothing on their own. “I feel like this is preparation for training camp, which is where the competition will really heat up,” the head coach said of the kicking battle.
This kicker battle is one of the top storylines to watch heading into camp. For a coach who built his reputation as a special teams coordinator, the position carries more organizational weight than it did under the previous regime.
| Kicker | Minicamp FGs | 2025 season | Resume note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dominic Zvada | 13-of-13, long of 60 | 17-of-25 at Michigan | Program-record nine makes of 50+ yards |
| Ben Sauls | 7-of-14 | 8-of-8 with Giants | Perfect on all 15 NFL kicks as a rookie |
Zvada’s Leg Was Never the Question
The rookie’s calling card has been distance since his Ann Arbor days. Zvada made 38 of 47 field-goal attempts over two seasons at Michigan, including a program-record nine makes from 50-plus yards. His 2024 season bordered on flawless: 21-of-22 overall, a perfect 7-for-7 from 50 and beyond.
Zvada slid to 17-of-25 as a senior, going 8-of-12 from 40-plus and 1-of-2 from 50-plus, and that accuracy dip pushed a first-round leg out of seven rounds entirely.
The Giants landed an undrafted kicker with a 70-yard leg who could steal the job. A perfect spring, capped by a 60-yarder with room to spare, and a training video of him effortlessly nailing one from 70 yards, has the accuracy question trending in the right direction at the exact moment the incumbent’s answer wobbled.
Sauls Earned More Rope Than One Bad June
Sauls stepped into the 2025 kicking carousel after Graham Gano’s neck injury ended the veteran’s season in November, and the undrafted Pittsburgh product converted all eight field-goal attempts and all seven extra points across three games, with a long of 45 yards against Dallas in the finale. The lefty, the NFL’s first left-footed kicker since Sebastian Janikowski, never missed as a professional. His NFL track record is short, but it is spotless.
Gano was limited to six games in 2025 by groin and neck injuries before the team released him in March, and the Giants cycled through three kickers in a single season, so Sauls has real equity from stabilizing that mess. Context softens the spring numbers only so far, though. The franchise did not import Harbaugh to tolerate kicking volatility, and a 50 percent minicamp with a directional miss pattern is the kind of tape a special-teams-minded head coach does not shrug off.
A Full Special Teams Reset Raises the Stakes
The Giants also signed punter Jordan Stout, another former Raven following Harbaugh to New Jersey, and an undrafted rookie, Ben Mann, is positioned to win the long-snapping job. With the return jobs unsettled on top of it, whoever wins the kicking competition will be operating inside an almost entirely rebuilt special teams unit.
Sauls owns the NFL resume. Zvada owns the spring, the distance, and the momentum. Camp legs decide it in West Virginia, and the rookie has made the incumbent’s margin for error disappear.
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