Mason Crosby is one of the highest-paid kickers in the NFL. Last season, he owned the highest salary-cap charge among kickers at $5.25 million; at this point for 2019, he ranks third with a cap charge of $4.85 million.

Crosby’s performance in 2018 wasn’t commensurate with his salary. While playing with a rookie snapper (Hunter Bradley) and rookie holder (JK Scott), Crosby ranked 24th in the NFL with 81.1 percent accuracy on field goals. Of his seven missed field goals, four came in one miserable performance at Ford Field. He also missed a game-winning field goal against Minnesota in Week 2, a game-tying field goal against Arizona in Week 13 and a kick that would have given Green Bay a quick lead at Seattle in Week 11.

Crosby is entering the final season under contract and will turn 35 just before the start of the season. Releasing him could create $3.6 million of cap space. That’s not going to happen now, general manager Brian Gutekunst said over lunch at the Scouting Combine last week, but that’s not to say he wouldn’t draft a kicker.

“I don’t know if you need to,” Gutekunst said of bringing in competition. “I think if the right guy was there, we’d consider that. At the same time, people underestimate how difficult it is to kick in Lambeau Field in the weather he has to kick it in. Mason’s done a good job of that over the years. He’s obviously a veteran, he’s been in a lot of situations. I think if we had the right guy, we certainly wouldn’t be opposed to that. But I look for Mason to have a bounce-back year.”

There were three kickers at the Scouting Combine: Utah’s Matt Gay, Oklahoma’s Austin Seibert and LSU’s Cole Tracy.

After playing soccer at Utah Valley University, Gay switched schools and sports. In two All-American seasons at Utah, he made 86.2 percent of his field-goal attempts (56 of 65). That includes a school-record eight field goals of 50-plus yards. Only 22 of his 82 kickoffs were returned in 2018.

“Me and my friends always kind of joked watching college football that ‘I could do that’ and ‘I could do that,’” Gay recalled. “One of my teammates actually, during the soccer season said, ‘Hey, I know someone at Utah if you’ve ever thought about kicking.’ The thought kind of stirred with me and my soccer season didn’t go the way I would have hoped it would have gone. It was a good time. I thought, you know what, I might as well go for it. I ended up leaving soccer and making the attempt to go to football.”

Seibert kicked and punted all four seasons. On field goals, he was 17-of-21 (81.0 percent) as a junior and 17-of-19 (89.5 percent) as a senior. He made a 58-yarder as a freshman. Of his 109 kickoffs in 2018, only 14 were returned.

In his one and only season at LSU, Tracy made 29-of-33 field goals (87.9 percent) with a school-record kick of 54 yards. He did not kick off. Tracy spent his first three seasons at Division II Assumption College in Worcester, Mass. In all, he’s the most prolific kicker in NCAA history with 97 field goals and 502 points.

“It was never about this,” Tracy said of the draft when asked why he transferred. “I knew what would come from this, from having a good year at LSU. You have that big stage. But it was all about the experience. It was all about the journey and the last few years from me and something I always wanted to do.”