ATLANTA — The Atlanta Falcons have ruled kicker Younghoe Koo out of Sunday night’s matchup with the Minnesota Vikings, the team announced Saturday afternoon.
The organization listed Koo’s reason for downgrade as not being injury related. He did not travel with the team to Minnesota.
The team simultaneously elevated new kicker Parker Romo to the game day roster via a standard practice squad elevation. Romo was signed by the team earlier this week after Atlanta worked out a group of kickers following Koo’s missed 44-yard field goal in the final seconds of the Falcons’ Week 1 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
This news comes after head coach Raheem Morris was asked about Koo’s status as the starting kicker all week following the missed field goal last Sunday coupled with Koo putting up his lowest field goal success rate last year at 73.5%. In his last 10 games (including last Sunday’s loss and not including the games he missed in 2024 following a stint on injured reserve), Koo has made 15 of his 23 field goals.
The miss Sunday was Koo’s first missed field goal with the chance to tie or take the lead in the final minute of the 4th quarter (or overtime) since September 2022 vs. New Orleans (which was a miss from 63 yards). He had made seven straight field goals in that specific situation before last Sunday.
“That’s cut-and-dry position, right? You either make it or you don’t, and we’ve got to have guys in a position to make them,” Morris said Wednesday. “And there’s no real coaching points there. Obviously, there’s kicking aspects and there’s points of those coaching things that they want to do and all those things. But for us, from a fan standpoint, a coach’s standpoint, everything else, you either make them or you don’t. You’ve got to go out and let it be competitive at every level. You want to go out and try to win games, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation if you make those kicks — you make them all clean, and that’s not the conversation. But we put it on ourselves, and now we’ve got to go out there and we’ve got to be ready to deal and be ready to make the best out of it.”
And, when asked, Koo himself said the conversation around his accuracy is happening more frequently than he, or anyone for that matter, would want.
“We’ve been in this situation so many times,” Koo said Monday. “The frustration just came out of just disappointment in myself and knowing that I know I’m better than that. On top of that, I let the guys down.”
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