One of the most overlooked areas on any football team – the kicking game – could be a major headache for the Giants tomorrow.
Green Bay’s frigid Lambeau Field, where the forecast is 4 degrees with a wind chill of minus-8 degrees at kickoff for the NFC Championship game, has tortured even the most dead-on specialists over the years.
When you throw in Big Blue’s lineup of a relatively untested kicker (Lawrence Tynes), a 41-year-old punter whose best days are behind him (Jeff Feagles) and a pair of rookies doing the snapping, it’s easy to understand the concern within the Giants’ camp this week.
Heightening the Giants’ kicking-game anxiety is that many NFL postseason games are decided by last-second field goals – something Tynes wasn’t forced to try at all this season.
Tynes, a fourth-year pro acquired from the Chiefs in the offseason, hasn’t attempted a potential game-winning field goal in the final seconds of a game since Oct. 22, 2006. In a possible good sign for the Giants, Tynes was true that day from a career-long 53 yards with 6 seconds left to beat the Chargers.
But that was in balmy conditions at Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium. Lambeau at night in the dead of January, on the other hand, is a situation no kicker relishes – especially if the arctic air is swirling and snow is falling.
Lambeau’s turf – notorious for its poor footing late in the season – is even more of a potential kicking nightmare.
“Distance and hang time will be nowhere near what it would be if it was 50 degrees,” said Tynes, who knows cold after two seasons in Canada. “It’s going to be a big factor in the game. It’s going to be the same on their side, too.”
The difference is, the Packers’ battery of kicker Mason Crosby and punter Jon Ryan is used to practicing and playing at Lambeau. The closest Tynes came to Green Bay-type conditions was swirling wind at Giants Stadium against the Redskins on Dec. 16 and driving snow the following week at Buffalo.
Tynes was a combined 2-for-3 on field goals in those games, but Tom Coughlin has done his best to pump up the confidence of his young Scottish kicker this week.
“Lawrence has done an outstanding job here down the stretch,” Coughlin said. “I’m very confident of his ability in any kind of clutch situation to be productive.”
The Giants have no reason to be as confident in Feagles after the 20-year veteran ranked near the bottom of the league with an overall 40.4-yard average in 2007. Feagles’ net average also was low (36 yards), although the NFL’s all-time leader in punts downed inside the opponent’s 20-yard line did have a respectable 25 of those this year.
Feagles grimaced at tomorrow’s looming weather scenario.
“Your hands are cold, and the ball is rock hard,” he said. “You just try to focus on (overcoming) those things, and hopefully you get a big play somewhere.”
bhubbuch@nypost.com