WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. – Brandon McManus spent the last two months content coaching his kids' soccer teams in Florida.
The veteran NFL kicker said he had "some calls" with teams about opportunities at the beginning of the season. But he was enjoying that time spent at home with family.
"But I'm a competitor, and like I said, I love this game so much," McManus said. "It's done a lot for me and my family, and I'll be excited to get back out here and have that opportunity."
That opportunity would be with the Rams, who signed him Tuesday after a workout that day alongside another veteran kicker in Matt Prater.
As much as he looks forward to this opportunity with the Rams, McManus also expressed sympathy for the way it came about in Blake Grupe's season-ending torn ACL sustained against the Cardinals.
"It's exciting," McManus said. "Any chance you get to play this game that I love and have had the chance to play for a long time. I was excited to get the call to come out to do the workout yesterday, and I feel bad for Blake, obviously. He had the opportunity to come in and make a kick for the Rams and then he got hurt, so I wish him the best in his recovery. But it was exciting to get the call to come work out for this great organization."
McManus last kicked for the Green Bay Packers, doing so in 2024 and 2025, and before that was the Jaguars' kicker for the 2023 season. The bulk of his experience came from spending his first nine seasons with the Broncos (2014-2022), helping them win Super Bowl 50 in February 2016.
While he is spending this week getting used to a new placekicking operation in Los Angeles, it's not an unfamiliar experience for him, between his mid-season arrival in Green Bay in 2024 working alongside long snapper Matt Orzech and punter Daniel Whelan and the number of punters he worked with in Denver.
"I went in the Green Bay in the middle of the season a couple years ago with a new snapper and new holder," McManus said. "And when I was in Denver, I was just telling it to (Rams punter Ethan (Evans), I might have had eight or nine punters in my nine years there. So I'm used to seeing new things."
Those kids he spent the last two months coaching are three sons, eight-year-old twins and a six-year old – ages where they have a greater awareness of what their dad does, and also who he is teammates with.
Their first reaction when their dad got the call about this opportunity?
"Just like all kids, like, can you get their autographs, the other players autographs," McManus said with a smile. "So I said, 'I'm not getting them for you. If you are here and you meet them, you can go up and ask them. But I'm not going to do your work for you.'"
Understandable, especially given the circumstances of needing to get on the same page with a new group of specialists and a new operation. But the disappointment in that answer is surely exceeded by the excited they have to see their dad kicking for an NFL team again.
"A cool thing about me being home these past couple months was to be able to spend time with them and do that," McManus said, referring to the time spent throwing the football with his boys and teaching them the game of football. "And now they're very excited for me to come out here, and they get to watch me play on TV again. Which, they were young when I played most of my career, they didn't really know, so now they're older, and their friends are talking at school. So it's cool and exciting for them."
