FOXBOROUGH, Massachusetts – Kicker Roberto Aguayo, who has been out of the NFL for almost three entire seasons after joining the league as a second-round pick for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers draft in 2016, is trying to revive his career at England’s New Training Squad Patriots.
The club is planning to hire Aguayo on Saturday, a source told ESPN Field Yates.
Aguayo’s career took a dramatic turn after the Buccaneers selected him with the 59th overall choice in 2016. He was highly praised from the state of Florida, having scored all 198 points after attempts and 69 out of 78 field goal attempts. He was the best kicker selected in the draft since the New York Jets defeated Mike Nugent in the second round in 2005 (No. 47 overall).
Aguayo made 22 of 31 in field goals as a rookie, fighting notably at the end of the season, and then the Buccaneers hired veteran Nick Folk off-season to compete for the best job. Folk won the job in the 2017 pre-season; he is currently the Patriots kicker and is in the middle of a year of career at 36.
Aguayo was claimed by the Chicago Bears in 2017, but released after less than a month, and he spent six weeks of the 2017 season on the Carolina Panthers’ training team. He spent the preseason and the 2018 off-season with the Los Angeles Chargers, but was released at the end of the preseason and has been out of the league ever since.
In New England, Folk is a free agent after the season. The Patriots also chose Justin Rohrwasser for the fifth round of 2020 on their training team, and the addition of Aguayo may be an indication that Rohrwasser’s development was not as good as the club imagined.