Colts on Spencer Shrader, Blake Grupe kicker battle: 'Be a difficult one'

INDIANAPOLIS — The hottest battle of Colts training camp likely won’t come at one of the positions left open by the departure of a long-term starter. It will be waged by two players who started for Indianapolis at the same spot last season. The Colts were able to bring back Blake Grupe in free agency, setting up a winner-take-all battle with a recovering Spencer Shrader for a kicking job that has essentially been up for grabs since age finally caught up with Adam Vinatieri.

The Colts have been through plenty of kicking competitions since Vinatieri retired. What makes this one different is that Indianapolis believes it has two of the best 32 kickers in the NFL on the roster. “It's going to be exciting to see how those two guys compete.

I think it'll bring the best out of both of them,” Indianapolis special teams coordinator Brian Mason said. “One of them will certainly win the competition, be starting for the Colts, and one of them will be fortunate enough to start for somebody else, but I think they're both going to be starting kickers this year in the NFL. ” A late hit by Raiders safety Tristin McCollum on Shrader’s right knee put everything in motion to get the Colts to this point.

Shrader, the promising young kicker who won the job last offseason, suffered a torn ACL and MCL, ending his season and putting the Colts right back on the kicker carousel. When veteran Michael Badgley faltered, Indianapolis pounced on Grupe after New Orleans released the third-year kicker, believing that the Colts’ operational consistency could fix what was ailing a kicker who’d missed eight field goals for the Saints. Grupe made every kick down the stretch, including a franchise-record 60-yard bomb to give the Colts a late lead in Seattle.