Tennessee Titans punter Brett Kern has a big target in his sights on Sunday.
He says the gigantic scoreboard, which is 160 feet long and hangs 90 feet above the playing field at Cowboys Stadium, is too tempting to pass up in warm-ups.
“I've never been there, so I probably will in warm-ups just for fun. Why not?” Kern said. “I don't know how high it is. I've never been there before, never played there before. I just know that when they built the stadium, it was a big deal when it came out. But you don't really hear a lot of people talk about it anymore.”
Last year in preseason, Titans rookie punter A.J. Trapasso hit the scoreboard when the Titans played a preseason game, causing quite a stir about the possibility of it happening in a regular season game and needing to be addressed by the NFL's competition committee, of which Titans coach Jeff Fisher is co-chairman.
However, all the chatter dissipated when the scoreboard never came into play during the season and has not been hit since.
“It hasn’t been hit since the preseason game and at that point last year, A.J. Trapasso was trying to make a team,” Fisher said. “He wasn’t trying to draw attention to himself and hit the board; he was just trying to make a team. I am a little surprised it hasn’t been hit, we’re all pleased with the league’s immediate response to that and they got a rule in place, and at some point it will probably be hit again. But we’re not going to go in there with the intention of hitting the thing.”
Would Kern let the temptation of aiming for the scoreboard carry over into a game situation on Sunday?
“I don't know if the game plan calls for it. I don't know if we have a specific play that says go try and hit the big jumbo screen. But I'm definitely going to try to hit it in warm-ups,” he said.
- Terry McCormick
- co-publiser of TitanInsider - Lions247