INDIANAPOLIS — From the Classical Academy in Colorado Springs, Anders Carlson, like his brother Daniel, took up the instrument of placekicking.
“TSA Classical Academy, it’s a special place,’’ Anders Carlson said here Thursday morning at the NFL Combine. “Me and my brother both give a lot of credit to Titan Nation for what they did in our lives. First it prepared us for academics and success off the field. They really challenged you there. I didn’t like it at the time but my parents did and it looks like it paid off pretty well.’’
The parents are big part of Daniel and Anders’ story. Hans Carlson grew up in Sweden playing tennis and soccer. He was recruited to play tennis at the University Alabama where he met his future wife, Jodie, who was working for Alabama’s legendary football coach Bear Bryant.
The Carlsons had three sons. Nils, the oldest, was a soccer goalie who became good enough to play professionally in Europe.
“My dad’s European (Hans) he’s a tennis coach,’’ Anders said. “We strayed away from tennis and focused on soccer. That’s where we grew up with a natural leg swing and enjoyed swinging our leg and eventually it led to football. We grew up playing soccer, kicking goals against (Nils). That transitioned into football. You saw the success that Daniel had and knew I could do something special, too.”
As the youngest brother, did Anders learn his craft by chasing down Daniel’s kicks and booting them back? After all, what are younger brothers for?
“I competed a lot with my brothers whether it was in the backyard playing basketball or soccer,’’ Anders said. “My goal was always to beat them. Being 4 years younger I probably had a difficult job doing that. I tried to beat Daniel as an 8th grader and couldn’t do it so that’s what motivated me to kick more. Yeah, he probably made me go shag balls if he was kicking that day. It was a great childhood and a lot of competition.”
Somehow, the Carlson boys, Daniel and Anders, wound up kicking at Auburn, the most hated rival of their parents’ school. Daniel is Auburn’s all-time leading scorer with 480 points from 2014-17 (he was 198 of 198 in extra points), while Anders, who had some injuries and a COVID season that led to five seasons from 2018-2022, is the school’s second-leading scorer with 410 points. That’s nearly 900 points over a 9 consecutive years for Auburn by the Carlson boys.
Daniel Carlson was a 5th-round draft pick of George Paton and the Vikings in 2018 but was cut after missing three field goals in his first two games a rookie. Vikings’ old-school head coach Mike Zimmer had no patience or young kickers.
Picked up by the Oakland Raiders, Carlson not only found his groove, last season for the Las Vegas Raiders he replaced the great Justin Tucker as the NFL’s best kicker last season. Daniel was an incredible 11 of 13 on field goals of at least 50 yards last season for the Raiders – including from 52 and 57 yards in a late-November win against the Broncos at Empower Field at Mile High.
“We talked a lot about the process, especially as I had the Combine coming up,’’ Anders said. “He just told me to enjoy this process while I’m doing it. He talked about some of the things he lacked going to the Vikings. He had a lot of talent but trusted himself not as much as he does now. Now with the Raiders he’s had a lot of success and I’m sure that’s not going to stop. He’s got a great group around him which is really crucial in the NFL. Yeah, we’ve talked about the good and bad of the kicking process.”
Kickers have a strange existence. They don’t block, catch, throw, run and they better not tackle. All they do for a football team is determine whether it wins or loses with an end-of-game field goal attempt.
“That’s what I like about it,’’ Anders said. “You go in there and it’s kind of a SWAT team mentality, right? You go in for that one kick and then you’re out of the game.’’
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