NFL Network, in the throes of its offseason schedule, is airing old “NFL Follies” seemingly daily, and one more recent episode I watched was originally produced in 2000 and featured a long segment about the much-mailigned kicker.

Part of the maligning was kickers’ inability to tackle returners, until, the nanrrator espoused, John Hall came along. Hall, who played for the Jets at the time, was a departure from the average NFL kicker in that he wasn’t a skinny guy. The show featured clips of Hall tackling, sometimes severely, kick returners, then followed those clips with other kickers making tacklers (including one forcing a fumble, how embarrassing).

Having worked in Madison, where Hall played in college at the University of Wisconsin, I remember when he entered the league and and brought his big leg with him. Over a decade later, his frame is the norm for NFL kickers, now stronger than they were 20 years ago. For perspective, Sebastian Janikowski is 6-foot-2, 250 pounds. They might not necessarily better tacklers, but no longer are they the most fragile athlete in pro sports, Martin Gramatica notwithstanding.

Remember the old “Saturday Night Live” sketch called “We Are the Kickers” which presented as NFL kickers as unique, mostly foreign, small guys. (”But please, no Green Bay, brrrrrr!”) A younger NFL fan might watch that skit today and not understand why it was funny. Hall might have had an average NFL career, but in one sense, he and other non-miniscule kickers that emerged in the 1990s changed the game.