Chargers put their confidence in kicker Yunghoe Koo in hopes it will help push the turnaround

The phone rang at Michael Husted’s home in late October 1997, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers kicker thought he knew what it meant.

Problems in his personal life — his mother was dying of cancer — started to follow him onto the field when he’d pace the three steps back and two steps left before each of his kicks. He wasn’t as mentally sharp as the job demanded and, as a result, he’d missed three extra points in five tries over the previous month.

This was the call that was going to end all of that; he was sure he was about to get fired. Everyone in town, it seemed, wanted him gone — except for the people who mattered.

“You’re our kicker,” Buccaneers coach Tony Dungy told Husted. “We’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

The following Sunday, Husted drilled a 36-yard kick in the final two minutes to help his team get a road win in Indianapolis.

“That gave me such a boost of confidence,” Husted remembered this week. “. . . Then, we got back on track.”

Husted, who kicked in 121 NFL games, said to get the ball right between the uprights, he had to get his thoughts right between his ears.

It’s the challenge facing the Chargers — winless in two close games in which rookie kicker Younghoe Koo missed a potential winning field goal and had a potential tying attempt blocked — as they get ready to play host to the undefeated Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.

The block, everyone acknowledges, wasn’t his fault, but the fact remains that the ball was snapped with the expectation of three points— three points the Chargers didn’t get.

After Koo missed two kicks last weekend, including the possible game-winner with five seconds left, Chargers coach Anthony Lynn delivered a similar message of confidence to his kicker.

“Koo’s our kicker,” Lynn said Monday. “He’s very confident, and I have to give him the benefit of the doubt after being around him the whole offseason and watching how he competed and how he took that job.

“He went out and had a bad day yesterday, but we’re still riding with him. And we’re hoping that he’ll bounce back.”

The process of getting Koo to bounce back began immediately after his 44-yard attempt slipped just right of the goalpost to seal the 19-17 loss to Miami.

While reporters rushed to ask what went wrong on the kick, defensive tackle Corey Liuget, a seven-year veteran, tried to usher Koo past the media. Koo didn’t take his teammate up on the shielding, instead answering questions.

Still, Liuget wanted Koo to know that he was looking out for him.

“He’s going to be put in that situation again and we’re going to need him. I just don’t want him to feel like . . . I didn’t want the media to make him feel bad,” Liuget said. “We knew we’re going to ride with him. I knew that in the moment. I had nothing against him. We all mess up.

“He’s going to win us a game this year kicking that ball. I didn’t want him to feel a lack of confidence.”

Players on the Chargers seem to understand the distinctive job a kicker must do. No other sport features singular responsibilities with so much on the line and so few chances to do your job.

“We’re like snipers,” Husted said. “You only get a few opportunities and they expect you to come through.”

Husted, who now coaches kickers and runs camps out of San Diego, described the miserable feeling of missing a kick as if he’d just pulled one yesterday.

“It feels horrible. You let your team down. You didn’t do your job,” he said. “You have these linemen that are sweating and fighting and everything, they go down the field and they rely on you to finish the drive and win the game, and you miss. You’re just like, ‘Man. This sucks.’

“To see their faces or to see their heads drop after they’ve battled so hard all game long, [you’re why] they come away empty-handed.”

That low is so low, Husted wouldn’t even wish it on his opponents.

“I never want to see a kicker miss,” he said. “Even when I was playing and the other guy had to kick a game-winner to beat us, you know, I wanted to win the game . . . but I didn’t want to see that guy miss.”

When it goes wrong — and it inevitably does at times — a kicker’s coaches and teammates can play a big role in taking what’s generally an isolated job and reminding him that he’s one of 53 on the roster.

“You’re a whole unit. It’s not just the kicker and the team. We’re all one big family,” Chargers safety Tre Boston said. “We rely on him. We trust in him. And, he’s going to do a great job for us later this season. With these misses and with this experience, you learn how you’re going to handle it the next time.”

In the days following the miss, Koo has done and said all the right things. He’s vowed to move on to the next kick — just like he would if he’d come through. The rookie convinced Lynn and special teams coach George Stewart — also Husted’s first special teams coach in the NFL — that he’s up for the job, and Koo had a strong week of practice.

“He bounced back just like we thought he would,” Lynn said.

The real challenge, though, will come the next time he’s called upon to snipe. The confidence has helped, but Koo knows he needs to come through.

“It’s huge. It’s what we’re about, everybody backing everybody up,” Koo said. “It’s been huge to have this support, but we have one thing on our mind Sunday. We have to go out there and beat the Chiefs.”

He’ll get his shot again. The Chargers think he’s the right man to take it. He just can’t miss.

“It’s his one job and you expect him to be perfect at it. That’s it. The average player out there, we get opportunity after opportunity,” Liuget said. “His job, he has to be perfect at it.”

dan.woike@latimes.com

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