Money Mac has been gold, and Evan McPherson opened the season against the Bucs last Sunday with a rush at Paycor Stadium in a performance that made him the AFC Special Teams Player of the Week.

Bengals.com senior writer Geoff Hobson called a timeout this week not to ice the NFL's hottest kicker, but to fan the flames. McPherson talks about how PGA great Scottie Scheffler has impacted his streak, as well as his faith, his girl-dadom, and a climb up the Bengals' all-time kicking lists that has him joking with Jim Breech about passing him as the franchise's all-time leader scorer.

The Conversation

GH: How's your neck after that hit last Sunday with  210-pound Bucs running back Josh Williams on that 47-yard kick return? May have impacted the game as much as your four field goals.

EM: It's feeling better now. Worked a little soreness out, but feeling good now.

GH: What did it feel like Monday morning?

EM: Sore. I woke up, I never felt like that before. So it was a new experience, but it was just a little bit of soreness, and makes me feel for all the guys in the locker room. I don't know how they do it. They hit somebody every play.

GH: That was an instinctive play on your part, right? You were just trying to get the guy out of bounds.

EM: Yeah. Usually we're trying to chauffer him out of bounds, but he didn't  want to just step out. He wanted to hit me. Good on him.

GH: All of Bengaldom held its breath because you're the hottest kicker in the NFL.  Congratulations on AFC Special Teams Player of the Week.

EM: Thank you. I appreciate it.

GH: What did you think when Zac Taylor flipped you the game ball and said we've got the greatest kicker on planet Earth?

EM: Super kind of him. Always appreciate Zac. Always just trusts me with the opportunities to go out there and perform. I appreciate the long attempts. Those are  a lot of fun. Just get to showcase the whole operation, the leg strength, and the accuracy, and everything that we've been working on throughout camp. I appreciate him trusting us with that.

GH: Nobody can remember the last time you missed. It seems like the longer it is, the better it is.

EM: Let's hope it continues to go that way. Got to keep the positive mindset and going out there and believing that I'm going to make every kick that I step on the field to make, and one day, whenever we do miss, just how do we respond to that and rebound off of that.

GH: You went 4-for-4 in the opener. One from 58 and one from 55. The first Bengal to have two that long in a game. The last two, the 58- and 32-yarder, were big.

EM: Seven-point games or 10-point games to push a single-digit lead to a double-digit lead. I feel like this year I've tried to really not change my mindset on different kicks. So I understand the situation, the score of the game, but I try not to put too much pressure on that kick.

Let's say if it's a seven-point game to go up two scores with seven minutes left. Obviously, that's a big kick, but in my head I'm just trying to treat it like normal course or first field goal of the game.

GH: Is that different than last year?

EM: I feel like it's different than years past. I feel like I knew the situation, and I feel like you maybe take a little bit more time to assess the whole situation, maybe the wind and factors and everything. But I feel like this year and last year, every kick I've just tried to go out there with one thought and commit to one target and not really overthink it.

GH: That that all started after the groin injury ended your worst season in 2024. Did you have a moment of Nirvana?

EM:  I feel like the injury was probably, what do they say? A blessing in disguise. I didn't want to get hurt, but I probably wasn't in the best spot mentally at the time, like kicking-wise. The injury just gave me time to, I guess, step back and reflect on things that I needed to change in my approach to the game of football.

I feel like there for a little bit I took it for granted a lot and maybe skipped all the small pieces of the puzzle you need to do to be successful, as in recovery stuff, like stretching before and after practice, before and after games, even at night, and just taking care of my body in a way where I  can step on the field confidently knowing that my body's ready to perform at the highest level possible.

And I feel like with the injury, it obviously really forced me to just kind of sit with my thoughts and think about ways that I could just be there for my team even more, and then how I could approach kicking. I wasn't hitting the ball terrible, but I wasn't hitting the ball great. And that time away, I feel like it showed me that I needed to kind of go back to the basics and do all those drills that I did growing up that made me a good kicker, and I feel like that's what I've done the past two years is stay consistent with the small drills.

GH: Like what?

EM: Like my warmup with the bottle. A lot of people ask me why I do it, and it's a training aid for me. The main person that came to mind is a golfer, Scottie Scheffler. You could argue he's the greatest golfer of all time. But he's the greatest golfer of our generation right now, and you see him on the driving range, and he starts every practice with his grip trainer, and he's constantly working on his grip, working on his grip, and you're just like, he's the best golfer in the world. Why does he have to work on his grip?

Because if you think you've got it all figured out, it only takes one or two times to kind of hit you in the mouth and kind of humble you. And so I feel like he's found a way to focus on the small details, which I feel like produces big results, and so that's kind of what I've been focusing on. It's like not feeling like I've got everything figured out because I don't, and I never will. But I feel like if you always have that interest in perfecting the craft, I feel like you have a better chance of succeeding because you're doing all the small things to find that success.

That's what I found. Why is the number one player in the world of golf doing all these little drills? It's because they matter. I feel like I should be doing everything that I can in my position in small drills and ball contact stuff and mindset things. Just thinking about making myself the best I can.

GH: What do you do with the bottle?

EM: I injured my plant ankle last year, and it was causing me to come in a little pigeon-toed. So my toe was closing, and then I was swinging around the ball and just kind of like pulling everything. And so as my ankle healed and got stronger, I was still having issues with coming in closed and coming around it. And so I put a bottle there.

In college I would come in pretty close to the ball, so I put a bottle there and then a bottle four yards in front of me. It's kind of like a little triangle, I guess, and so the bottle next to the ball is to make sure my plant foot doesn't get too close, and it's pointing in the right direction every kick, and then the bottle four yards in front is a reminder to get through the ball because in college I had a big issue just falling off the ball. And when you hit it good, it goes really far. But whenever you get under it and you fall out of it, the ball typically just goes pretty far right, and it's spinning really fast. And so all I worked on coming out of college was my plant and finishing downfield.

I didn't do any of that for four or five years. And then last year I just kind of implemented that into my routine, and I've noticed a lot of leaps on my ball contact, my ball contact consistency, getting down the field, not falling out of balls as much. I feel like I'm able to handle the wind a little bit better.

GH: How did you get through that stretch after you got hurt?

EM: Going through my injury, for the most part, a lot of it was my wife, and also I guess family and stuff. I talk a lot with my younger brother about kicking since he's at Auburn.

GH: You were married right after your rookie year in 2022, and you have two little girls.  How has fatherhood impacted your kicking?

EM: It's been great because everybody says that kids bring a certain perspective into life and to sports, and they certainly do. Kids definitely humble you in a good way. Just because it's funny, they don't care if you have a good day or a bad day. They're still going to love you. They're still going to make you change their diaper. I have great games, and a lot of people, they ask, oh, what do you go home and do? I go home and change a poopy diaper.

GH: What would you do after Sunday's game?

EM: My wife and went to Camporosso's in Fort Mitchell and had a nice dinner with her cousins. They came into town. Thankful for our babysitter. I got to see my oldest daughter, Merritt (two-and-a-half), whenever we got home and like I said, she doesn't care. She doesn't know. She was at the game, but she was in the daycare just playing. The youngest is Millie. We had a nice relaxing dinner without the kids. And I was able to see my daughter and rock her before bed, so that was really nice.

GH: Were you able to lift them up Monday morning because of your neck?

EM: You have to. They don't care. But of course, man.

GH: So a wife, two kids. Last week you went to Merritt's first ballet recital, which can only mean you're climbing up the Bengals' all-time lists in your sixth season here. You've hit 16 straight field goals and Shayne Graham's record of 21 is in reach. Your career percentage of 83.67 is getting close to Graham's 86.76. You're now fifth on the list with 123 field goals. Your 576 points are still a bit shy of Jim Breech's club record of 1,151.

EM: The longest-tenured guy was Breech. How long was Breech here? Ten years? Twelve years?

GH: Thirteen.

EM: And then Shayne was seven.  I always mess with Breech catching up to his all-time points record. Breech, I feel like he's got a great head on his shoulders. I feel like to some people (records) mean a lot, but in the grand scheme of things they don't mean anything. But it's cool, don't get me wrong. But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't mean much, and I feel like that's how Breech thinks about it.

Breech wants me to succeed, and I appreciate Breech. Even Shayne. I haven't experienced any retired kickers wish anything bad or wish somebody doesn't pass them. Breech and Shayne, have been both great for me just to get to know, and it's been fun talking to them and just kind of hearing about their careers.

GH: Do you want to pass Breech?

EM: I would like to play as long as I can, as long as my body holds up, and if I could be a Cincinnati Bengal for my whole career, that would be ideal.

GH: And break Breech's record?

EM: And break Breech's record, we'll see.​

GH: I've got your grandfather's book here that you gave me at the end of last season. Have Another Cup, a collection of Darrell R. Norman's columns from The Gadsen Times, which I really enjoy. I do what he suggests. I keep it on my desk and I take a break from writing, sip a coffee, and read one of his essays. Very interesting guy. Studied Russian at my alma mater, Syracuse, and became a translator for the Air Force before switching to journalism late in life and died at 83 four years ago. Since he was a newspaper columnist, I have to ask you about him.

EM: He was always funny. He was the kind of grandfather growing up, I wouldn't say he was hard on us, but we'd do some yard work, hang out, and do chores around his house. But he was always a good guy to hang out with. I feel like whenever we were younger growing up, if our parents were working, they'd always ship us to the grandparents' house, and we always enjoyed going over to Papa Darrell's home because he had a pool there for a while.

I can remember countless birthdays on his back porch, just watermelon and birthday cakes. I remember my birthdays, my little brother's birthdays and my older brother's birthdays. I remember just such special times even before he passed, like in the nursing home.

He wasn't that much of a spiritual guy for the longest time, and my mom, towards the end, was kind of in his ear about it. She was like, you want to be confident with where you're going when you pass, and she was on him all the time. She would literally visit him every single day during lunchtime.

And I can vividly remember my mom was telling me the story that it was maybe a week before he passed. Getting chills just thinking about it. One of the nurses called my mom and said that her dad asked to speak with a preacher and that he wanted to give his life to Christ so that he knew without a shadow of a doubt where he was going whenever he passed. That was like a week before he passed when he gave his life to Christ, and I can just vividly remember my mom telling me that, and it was so special just getting to go visit him in the months before he passed.

He was a great man. Great writer. He was in the Air Force. He was a translator, and so that's where he and his wife at the time, they picked my mom up in Anchorage, Alaska, when he was based there. So they adopted my mom, and that's how I'm on this earth today because of him.

GH: I guess you probably do think from time to time about the twist of fate.

EM: It is crazy because a lot of people say I resemble my mom, and so I feel like I get a lot of my mom's, I guess, birth parents' side of the family. Never met them, but you always wonder about them.

GH: I know you're a man of great faith. That moment when your grandfather gave himself to Christ, that had to have a big impact on you.

EM: It obviously shows how selfless he is. It shows how great I feel like my mom is that she really cared about him that much to not give up on him and just to make sure that they were able to meet again.

GH: On a personal note, my family is grateful how you've supported our golf tournament that raises money for the Children's Heart Foundation in memory of our late grandson. You came to the first annual Jack Hobson Golf Classic, and even though it got rained out, you stayed until pretty much we all left and talked to everyone. This year you came to The Jack, brought your holder Ryan Rehkow and snapper William Wagner and got in the group with special teams coordinator Darrin Simmons. What makes you so down to earth? Boy next door?

EM: Some of it probably comes from Papa Darrell. He was a really down-to-earth, kind of chill guy and respectful. And I feel like my parents, with their boys, instilled that in us to be respectful young men. And I guess just be lights in this dark world. I feel like this is what we've been challenged to be. I feel like the world's got so much dark in it, then why not try to bring some light? I feel like me and my brothers' attitudes and actions, a lot of it goes to our parents, for sure.

GH: How long do you think you can kick one?

EM: How long? It's funny because I was talking with Cam Little about that this summer, and I was like, "What do you think the max is?' And he said 75 in a game. He thinks 75. Somebody will hit 75. And then I'm sitting there thinking there's no way. And then you sit back and look at Butker's 69 in preseason. That was good from at least '75.

GH: You got the Bengals record last year with 63, but some of yours look like they could go 75. The 58 Sunday could have gone 70.

EM: I think so. I mean, as crazy as it sounds, yeah, I feel like if you get the right conditions, the right wind and warm air. I mean, I hit a 68 in the last pregame and I got under the ball. I didn't really hit it that well. I got under it. Hit it higher than I wanted, but it just caught the wind and rode and cleared by like two yards. I don't know. I feel like at this point, if you can have the right conditions, yeah, I can see somebody hitting a 75.

GH: Is that somebody Evan McPherson?

EM: With the right conditions, but I would set my max at maybe 75. I feel like if I connected on one really well, there's a chance.

GH: Well, you're definitely on the Board of The Jack. I don't know what you're going to do, and I kind of just made it up, but I feel like I've got to create something because you've been so good to the charity.

EM: First board member. My next thing is to win it.