WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. – The Rams made a change at kicker, head coach Sean McVay confirmed Tuesday.
Less than 24 hours after McVay said postgame he would "evaluate everything" when asked about the kicking unit, Los Angeles waived Harrison Mevis on Tuesday and plans to sign Blake Grupe – most recently on the Jets' practice squad – as Mevis' replacement.
"Appreciate (Mevis's) contributions," McVay said in a video conference with reporters Tuesday evening. "I thought he was a rock for us last year when we obviously struggled in that area. But ultimately we need better production, and that's what we're hoping to get out of from Blake."
Postgame, McVay said that "in the kicking game, especially, with our PAT/field goal (unit), not even close to good enough" and that "it cost us the game." On Tuesday, McVay said it was not sole the reason the Rams didn't win Monday night and that "I probably should have articulated it better."
"(Mevis) wasn't exclusively the reason... This is the greatest team sport, and I think one of the things that, when I look at last night, if I could rephrase what I was saying, it was that unit cost us an opportunity to win the game," McVay said. "That wasn't the reason that we didn't win exclusively."
Mevis originally joined the Rams halfway through the 2025 season as their replacement for Joshua Karty. That body of work – 12 of 13 field goals made, all 39 extra point attempts made across nine regular season games, plus 6 of 6 field goals and all nine extra points made across three playoff games, including the game-winner against the Bears in the divisional round – led to the Rams tendering Mevis as an exclusive rights free agent and effectively retain him as their kicker for 2026 on a one-year deal.
While Mevis made all 14 of his extra point attempts through the first five games of the season, he made only 5 of 9 field goal attempts – with all four of those misses coming from beyond 40 yards. Two of those misses came in the Rams' Monday Night Football loss to Bills, including a missed 50-yarder in the first quarter and the potential game-winner from 48 blocked.
While Grupe and current Rams special teams coordinator Bubba Ventrone were both previously with the Colts, their respective times in Indianapolis did not overlap.
A kicker who originally entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent signed by the Saints in 2023, Grupe spent his first two-and-a-half seasons in New Orleans, making 75 of 94 field goal attempts in 45 games before being released in late November last year and then signing with the Colts. In five games with Indianapolis, he finished the season 11 of 11 on field goal attempts, with five of those 11 makes coming from 40-plus yards.
"This guy has experience," McVay said of Grupe. "He did a great job for Indy last year, has kicked in a lot of big-time professional settings and we felt like he was the best guy available that had real game experience. And you debated going back and forth, 'do we want to try to create a competition similar to what we did with Karty and Mevis when we first brought him in?' And what we felt like was the best thing was really just to be able to give him an opportunity to come in here and do his thing, and hopefully build on some real cool momentum that he had established in Indy."
