When the Jets drafted Ohio State kicker Mike Nugent with the 47th pick in last weekend’s NFL draft, it became clear that the move would lead to the release of incumbent kicker Doug Brien. The Jets followed through on that plan yesterday, giving Brien his walking papers.

In truth, though, Brien’s release was pretty much guaranteed from the moment he missed the second of two possible game-winning field goals during last year’s overtime playoff loss to Pittsburgh. Although Brien was actually an above-average field goal kicker during the 2004 regular season – Football Outsiders’ weather-adjusted statistics estimate his value at 3.7 points above league average, 11th among field goal kickers – there was no way after last year’s choke that the team could bring him back to face the angry fans at the Meadowlands.

The Jets could have replaced Brien in a quiet, efficient manner. Instead, they made Nugent only the second kicker in the past dozen years to be drafted in the first two rounds. It was a colossal overreaction that makes it harder for Gang Green to return to the playoffs in 2005.

There is no doubt that Nugent is the best kicking prospect to come out of college in a number of years. But the key word there is “prospect.” Kickers are only rarely drafted, and the number of drafted kickers who develop into productive, enduring NFL players is astonishingly low.

Not counting Nugent, 13 different kickers have been chosen in the first five rounds of the NFL draft since 1993, and only five of those kickers spent all of last season on an NFL roster. One of them was – yes – Doug Brien, who in 1994 was a prospect deemed worthy of a third-round pick by the San Francisco 49ers. Another was 2003 third-round pick Nate Kaeding of San Diego. Without a missed field goal by last year’s hot kicking prospect in the wild-card game, of course, there would have been no opportunity for Brien to miss two field goals against Pittsburgh the following week, and the Jets would not have spent a second-round pick on this year’s hot kicking prospect.

Kickers are notoriously inconsistent from year to year, and kickers who are good enough to be drafted high end up no different. Martin Gramatica was as highly lauded as Nugent when Tampa Bay used a third-round pick on him in 1999; last year, he was booed out of town after he missed two field goals in a close loss to St. Louis and three in a close loss to Carolina. Arizona chose his brother Bill in the fourth round of 2001, and the younger Gramatica was out of the league within three years.

Green Bay wasted a third-round pick in 1997 on Brett Conway, who didn’t even make their roster. The Rams used a third-rounder on Steve McLaughlin in 1995 and he played only one season, missing half his field goals. Travis Dorsch, a Cincinnati fourth-rounder in 2002, was out of the league after a single game.

Of course, any player chosen in the second round of the draft could turn out to be a bust, whether a kicker or any other position. But when it comes to players at offensive or defensive positions, the higher a player is chosen in the draft, the more likely he will turn out to be a starter or even a Pro Bowl talent. That’s not true for the specialists like kickers and punters.

Last year’s two Pro Bowl kickers, New England’s Adam Vinatieri and Philadelphia’s David Akers, were both undrafted free agents. So were the two Pro Bowl kickers from the year before, Indianapolis’s Mike Vanderjagt and St. Louis’s Jeff Wilkins.

Contrast that to the other positions where the Jets had holes going into the draft: offensive tackle, defensive tackle, and cornerback. A great majority of Pro Bowlers at these positions were first-round picks, and the rest were primarily second- and third rounders. The Jets did get a cornerback in the second round and a defensive tackle in the third, but they took no offensive linemen.

Two tackles, Marcus Johnson of Mississippi and Khalif Barnes of Washington, went off the draft board in the next five picks after the Jets took Nugent. Instead of one of those players, the Jets will go into camp with Marko Cavka – a 2004 sixth-round pick who didn’t even play last year – on top of the depth chart at right tackle, and with no depth behind him.

Johnson and Barnes could turn out to be flops. But since most second round offensive linemen become productive starters, and most sixth-round linemen do not, the difference in value between those players and Cavka is far greater than the difference in value between Nugent and a league-average free agent kicker. This would be true even if Nugent were guaranteed to immediately become the best kicker in the NFL, and of course there is no such guarantee.

A common refrain from Jets fans excited about the Nugent selection is that the Jets were just a kicker away from a trip to New England for the AFC Championship Game. But that assumes that the 2004 Jets and the 2005 Jets are the same except for Nugent, and they aren’t. The team has holes on the offensive and defensive lines that will make a repeat of last year’s 10-6 record extremely difficult.

Nugent, who connected on 24 of 27 field goals last season, including five of six from beyond 50 yards, might be more likely than Brien to connect on a last-minute field goal. But as bad as it might be to miss that field goal, it is even worse to lose by two touchdowns because you only have half an offensive line.

Mr. Schatz is the editor in chief of FootballOutsiders.com