Botched kick attempt by Younghoe Koo sums up lost season for Giants

Kicker Younghoe Koo provided a standout moment for the 2025 New York Giants.

Quite rightly, this was not a good thing.

Koo had a chance to bring the Giants within one score of the New England Patriots with a 47-yard field goal attempt during the second quarter Monday night in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

The ball was broken.

Koo ran forward.

He brought his kicking leg back, then forward.

But Koo’s foot never reached the ball.

Instead, his toe slammed hard into the ground directly behind the pigskin, leaving holder Jamie Gillan to fend for himself with the ball. Gillan was tackled for a 13-yard loss and the Giants stayed within 10 points en route to a 33-15 loss.

After the footage aired, “Monday Night Football” showed Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart on the sideline, appearing to roll his eyes and saying, “Oh my God.” It’s been that kind of season for the Giants, who lost their seventh straight game and fell to 2-11 on the season.

Koo said after the match that despite the sequence appearing, his foot didn’t actually get stuck in the turf. Instead, the veteran kicker said, he noticed a problem with the grip and made a split-second decision to give up.

“As I walked toward the ball, the bottom of the ball was sliding,” Koo said. “So I just got interested in it.”

Koo credited Gillan for his attempt to save the hold.

“Jamie did a good job catching it and putting it back,” Koo said, “but at that point it was too late.”

Nevertheless, this botched play was ruthlessly mocked. Some on social media are comparing Koo to the fictional character Charlie Brown, whose failure to even make contact while attempting to kick a football was a running joke in the Peanuts comic strip.

Some joked that Koo deliberately failed to help the Patriots cover the point spread. Others have compared it to the way the ground sometimes seems to get in the way of a golfer’s swing.

“Eli, it’s like you’re hitting one of your big nine irons,” Peyton Manning told his brother during ESPN2’s “ManningCast” broadcast of the game. “It’s all just grass.”

Giants interim coach Mike Kafka agreed with Koo’s account.

“I saw it live,” Kafka told reporters after the match. “The ball kind of slipped a little bit. He wasn’t sure if it was going to settle. Jamie tried to reset it and at that point he was already a little bit out of his rhythm. So it was just tough at that point.”

Koo played in four games as an undrafted rookie with the Chargers in 2017 and eventually joined the Atlanta Falcons, reaching the Pro Bowl in 2020. He was cut by Atlanta two games into the season and signed with the Giants a few days later.