Rodrigo Blankenship: Walk-On, “Hot Rod,” and One of the NFL’s Most Unlikely Fan Favorites
Rodrigo Blankenship walked onto the University of Georgia campus in 2015 with no scholarship, no guarantee of playing time, and a pair of thick black-framed sports glasses that would eventually become more famous than most full scholarships. By the time he left Athens, he held the record for the longest field goal in Rose Bowl history and had never missed a single extra point in four years of college football. Two hundred attempts. Two hundred makes.
From Recife to Marietta: How a Soccer Kid Became a Kicker
Born January 29, 1997, in Marietta, Georgia, Blankenship has Brazilian roots on his mother’s side. His mother Izabella is originally from Recife, Brazil, where he visited family as a child and reportedly has around 100 cousins. His father Ken played college football at Florida from 1967 to 1969, then spent decades coaching soccer and eventually football.
Rodrigo mostly played soccer growing up, and he was good enough that Ken would fly him to Recife to train at soccer academies. It was when he first kicked a football at around age 10 that Ken noticed something different: the backspin and rotation were unlike anything he’d seen from a kid that age. “I thought it would be worth trying to make that evolve into something,” Ken later said. From fifth grade onward, he gave his son a prescribed objective and daily workout schedule for kicking. Hundreds of thousands of practice kicks followed.
At Sprayberry High School in Marietta, Blankenship made seven of 10 field goal attempts as a senior, including kicks of 56 and 51 yards, while also averaging 46 yards as the team’s punter. He was ranked ninth nationally among kickers by 247Sports and played in the 2014 U.S. Army All-American Bowl. Georgia offered him a preferred walk-on spot. No scholarship. He took it.
Four Years at Georgia: Perfect Extra Points and One Rose Bowl Record
He redshirted in 2015, then won the starting job as a redshirt freshman. In 2016 he went 14 for 18 on field goals and 26 for 26 on extra points, leading Georgia in scoring and earning a spot on the All-SEC Freshman team. In 2017, he made 20 of 23 field goal attempts and all 63 extra point attempts. That 87% field goal rate was the sixth-best single season in school history.
The 2017 season had a moment worth telling separately. After Georgia beat Notre Dame 20-19, Blankenship gathered his teammates to announce he’d been awarded a full athletic scholarship. He’d been paying his own way for two years at that point.
Then came the 2018 Rose Bowl against Oklahoma. Georgia trailed when Blankenship lined up from 55 yards. He made it. That kick broke the all-time Rose Bowl record for length and shifted momentum in a game Georgia eventually won 54-48 in overtime, one of the highest-scoring bowl games in college football history. A few weeks later in the College Football Playoff National Championship against Alabama, he hit a 51-yarder in overtime to put Georgia briefly ahead. Georgia lost 26-23, but the kick stands as the longest field goal in that game’s history.
His senior year in 2019, he led the SEC in both field goal attempts and conversions, earned First-team All-SEC honors, and in December won the Lou Groza Award, given annually to the nation’s top placekicker. His final college line: 80 for 97 on field goals and 200 for 200 on extra points across five seasons. That extra point number gets cited constantly, but here’s what makes it genuinely odd: his longest career field goal in the NFL was 53 yards, two yards shorter than his Rose Bowl record. He was more consistent as an amateur than as a professional by at least one measure.
Undrafted, Unsigned, and Then Starting for the Colts
No team drafted him in 2020. The Indianapolis Colts signed him as an undrafted free agent on April 29, 2020, and he won the starting job in training camp ahead of Chase McLaughlin.
His first NFL game was a 27-20 loss to Jacksonville. He made two of three field goals and both extra points. The Jaguars won one game that entire season. That was it.
Week 11 against Green Bay: Blankenship made four field goals in regulation and then hit a 39-yarder in overtime to give the Colts a 34-31 win. That earned him AFC Special Teams Player of the Week. At one point in mid-December, his season field goal percentage of 90.6% was better than Justin Tucker’s 88.5% over the same stretch. He finished the year 32 for 37 on field goals and 43 for 45 on extra points, scored 139 points, and was named to the PFWA All-Rookie Team.
2021 went sideways fast. He appeared in five games, made 11 of 14 field goal attempts, and then suffered a hip injury in Week 5 that put him on injured reserve. Michael Badgley replaced him and went 18 for 21 with all 39 extra points for the rest of the season. Indianapolis didn’t re-sign Badgley, but they also didn’t hand Blankenship the job back cleanly going into 2022.
The Miss That Ended His Time in Indianapolis
Week 1, 2022, in Houston. Colts and Texans tie 20-20 in overtime, the franchise’s first tie in 40 years. Blankenship pushed a 42-yard field goal wide right. He also kicked two kickoffs out of bounds, which mattered because punter Rigoberto Sanchez had torn his Achilles in training camp and Blankenship was handling kickoff duties for the first time.
Two days later, the Colts waived him. He’d appeared in 22 games for Indianapolis over three seasons, going 45 for 54 on field goals (83.3%) and scoring 139 points in his best year alone.
The Arizona Cardinals signed him to their practice squad on October 18, elevated him to the active roster twice in the same month, then waived him on November 2. That’s five roster moves in 15 days. Tampa Bay signed him to their practice squad in June 2023. He never played a regular-season game for the Buccaneers.
His NFL career totals: 47 for 56 on field goals (83.9%), 54 for 58 on extra points, 195 points scored, career-long of 53 yards, across 24 games. That 83.9% field goal rate sits below the career averages of Tucker (91.1%), Harrison Butker (87.9%), and Evan McPherson (88.7%). Worth saying plainly. He was a starter-quality NFL kicker who had two bad stretches and lost his job both times. That’s not a contradiction. It’s just how the position works.
UFL, St. Louis, and a Cheering Section Wearing Fake Glasses
In January 2025, the St. Louis Battlehawks signed him. Their previous kicker, Andre Szmyt, had earned an NFL deal with the Cleveland Browns. Blankenship had been out of the NFL rotation for roughly 18 months.
“Since I’ve been out of the rotation for a little while, I think teams probably weren’t sure that I could perform in a game,” he told KSDK in St. Louis. “The fact that I was able to get into the UFL and be with the Battlehawks, I’m very thankful. Now I have an opportunity to show I’m still capable of kicking at a high level.”
He finished the 2025 UFL season 21 for 22 on field goals with a league-high 56-yarder, earning All-UFL Team honors and UFL Special Teams Player of the Week in Week 6. His only miss came from beyond 50 yards. He was 7 for 7 on kicks between 40 and 49 yards and 5 for 5 on kicks from 50 or more through seven games, before eventually missing once. In St. Louis, he developed an actual cheering section. Fans showed up wearing replica thick-framed glasses to honor his look. The Battlehawks re-signed him for the 2026 season in October 2025.
The Jets X Factor piece from June 2025 made the case that he was the most qualified unsigned kicker available for teams with kicking problems, specifically naming the New York Jets. He has more proven NFL reps than most unsigned kickers in any given offseason. Whether any team calls is a different question. The UFL re-signing suggests he’s not waiting around speculating about it.
The Glasses, the Rap Song, the LEGO Sets
The nickname is Hot Rod. Also Specs. Also Mr. Rec Specs. The hashtag is #RespectTheSpecs. At Georgia he studied digital and broadcast journalism with a focus on sports journalism, so he understood from early on how identity and media intersect. He didn’t change the glasses when he got to the NFL. He leaned in.
In April 2018, during his junior season at Georgia, he released a rap song called “ATD” (Attack the Day), a phrase used by Kirby Smart. He co-wrote it with a producer called Darkside and a collaborator billed as Amazing Ming. It’s on SoundCloud. It’s earnest and awkward and kind of charming, which is a fairly accurate description of his public persona generally.
He collects rare sneakers and matches them with his socks. He builds large LEGO sets and has talked publicly about it enough that he formed a friendship with LEGO YouTuber Ryan McCullough. He owns a cat named Lucas. He admires Eric Dickerson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which is an unusual combination even for a kicker with Brazilian heritage who used to train at soccer academies in Recife.
His Instagram has 215,000 followers, which is notable for a player who has 24 career NFL games to his name. Most kickers with similar resumes don’t generate that kind of following. The glasses are part of it. The personality is more of it.
Career Stats at a Glance
College (2016-2019 at Georgia): 80 for 97 on field goals, 200 for 200 on extra points, career-long of 55 yards (2018 Rose Bowl), Lou Groza Award winner 2019, First-team All-SEC 2019, Second-team All-SEC 2018.
NFL (2020-2022): 47 for 56 on field goals (83.9%), 54 for 58 on extra points (93.1%), 195 points, career-long of 53 yards, 24 regular-season games, 1 playoff game (1 for 2 on field goals). PFWA All-Rookie Team 2020.
UFL (2025 with St. Louis Battlehawks): 21 for 22 on field goals (95.5%), league-high long of 56 yards, All-UFL Team, UFL Special Teams Player of the Week Week 6. Re-signed for 2026.
The college and UFL numbers are better than the NFL numbers. His best NFL season (2020) came when he kicked 37 field goals and 45 extra points in 16 games, which is roughly average volume for a starting NFL kicker. The hip injury in 2021 almost certainly disrupted whatever mechanical work he’d done between his rookie and sophomore seasons. Whether the 2025 UFL performance represents a fixed kicker or a different level of competition is the honest open question. The 56-yarder in the UFL is real. So is the fact that the UFL isn’t the NFL. Both things are true.
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