If there was a lesson for Brian Gutekunst in punter JK Scott, the Green Bay Packers general manager did not apply it to kicker Anders Carlson.

The Packers waived Carlson on Tuesday. Gutekunst drafted Carlson from Auburn in the sixth round last year but moved on from the kicker after one season.

In Gutekunst’s first NFL Draft calling the shots for Green Bay, the Packers picked Scott from Alabama in the fifth round in 2018. Green Bay cut Scott after three seasons.

Scott is preparing for his third season with the Los Angeles Chargers. Over Scott’s two seasons in Los Angeles, the Chargers have yielded the fewest punt-return yards in the NFL.

In discussing the decision to part ways with Carlson, the general manager referenced Scott and Mason Crosby, the Packers kicker for 16 seasons until Gutekunst drafted Carlson to replace him last year.

“I’m probably not as patient with specialists as I should be,” Gutekunst said. “You know, I really am not. I mean, I give (former Packers general manager) Ted (Thompson) a lot of credit. Certainly, he was a much more patient man than I was. But I think Mason was under 80 percent until, like, his fifth year, and then that sixth year was my first year in the office in 2012, and I think he was 60-some percent and missed, like, 12 kicks, and I can tell you right now that there were people in the office that were like, ‘Let’s move on.’ And so I probably need to be a little bit more patient. I mean, we had JK Scott in here. He’s turned into a very good punter, you know.

“But at the same time, I’m very confident in this team and what we can accomplish, so I want to make sure we give this team every opportunity to win. And so there’s going to be a standard that we’re going to try to reach.”

As a rookie, Carlson made 27-of-33 field-goal attempts and 34-of-39 extra-point tries in 17 regular-season games as a rookie. In two playoff games, he made 2-of-3 field-goal attempts and 7-of-8 extra-point tries. Carlson became the first rookie in league history to make a field goal in 17 regular-season games. But with the playoffs included, he also had the most misses on extra points with six and on total kicks with 13 in the NFL in 2023.

Carlson’s postseason field-goal miss came on a 41-yard attempt with 6:18 left in a second-round game against the San Francisco 49ers on Jan. 20. The 49ers responded with a 12-play, 69-yard drive capped by running back Christian McCaffrey’s 6-yard touchdown run with 67 seconds to play. San Francisco took a 24-21 lead instead of tying the game, and that ended up as the final score.

In the offseason, Green Bay signed Minnesota Vikings kicker Greg Joseph in free agency, and with undrafted rookie Alex Hale, the Packers carried three kickers in training camp.

When Green Bay cut Carlson and Hale as it reduced its preseason roster to the regular-season limit of 53 active players, it appeared Joseph had won the kicking job. But the Packers will have Brayden Narveson doing their kicking when Green Bay kicks off its season against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sept. 6 in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The Packers claimed the undrafted rookie off waivers on Wednesday after the Tennessee Titans let Narveson go on Tuesday. Narveson did all of Tennessee’s kicking in the preseason. He made 6-of-7 field-goal attempts (with the miss coming from 58 yards) and both extra points. He made a 59-yarder and hit a 46-yarder as time expired in a 16-15 win over the Seattle Seahawks.

But the Titans will enter the season with Nick Folk as their kicker, keeping the incumbent with 17 seasons of NFL experience.

“We rotated some kickers through here,” Gutekunst said. “I think we were the only team to have three for most of the training camp, and so we were looking a lot. We were monitoring the league. Brayden was a kid that we liked coming out, and then he had an excellent preseason there in Tennessee. As it unfolded and he was let go, we just thought it was an opportunity to get a really good, young kicker and give him a shot at it.”

Packers coach Matt LaFleur said getting Narveson ready for the season-opening game was special-teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia’s job.

“This is unchartered territory, I would say,” LaFleur said. “… It’s just you’ve just got to come in and perform. I don’t know how else to put it. But it’s definitely a unique situation.”

Carlson made 3-of-4 field-goal attempts during the preseason, the same as Joseph. Hale did not kick during the three preseason games, but Green Bay retained him on the practice squad.

Carlson connected on field goals of 33, 46 and 54 yards. His miss came from 32 yards with 7:23 remaining in the Packers’ preseason finale.

“I mean, that certainly matters, but that wasn’t something that turned the page on it,” Gutekunst said about the miss and cutting Carlson. “… I think it was a culmination of the whole camp and everything. I think for me, and I think our group as we went through it, it was just we were going to try to get better there, and whether that was Anders or that was somebody from outside, it didn’t matter. But we needed to get better. We felt we needed to get better. And so that’s kind of the reason why we made the decision.

“Kickers in this league, some of them come out right away, and they can handle it, and sometimes they’ve got to bounce around a few times before they actually land. I think Anders is probably going to be one of those guys. He’s got a ton of talent. He actually had a pretty solid rookie year for us. But I just think at this time we were looking for a little bit better, and that’s the direction we’re heading in.”

Like Scott (and Crosby, who kicked for the New York Giants last season), Gutekunst said he thought Carlson would return to the NFL.

“I can’t say enough about his work ethic,” Gutekunst said. “He’s put in all the time. He’s done everything we’ve asked him to do, and he’s had some really good moments here.

“Again, I think it’s no different than anything else. We’re constantly looking at: If there’s an opportunity that we think we might have a chance to get better, does it make sense to take that chance? And in this particular instance, I felt it was necessary.”

Carlson won’t need to look far for an example to illustrate Gutekunst’s expectations for him. Also a former Auburn kicker, Carlson’s brother Daniel Carlson was a fifth-round draft pick of the Minnesota Vikings in 2018. When Carlson missed three field-goal attempts, including one in overtime, in his second game with Minnesota, the Vikings cut him. Since then, Carlson has tied for the NFL scoring lead twice, become the first player in NFL history to win the Special Teams Player of the Week Award four times in one season and made first-team All-Pro once with the Las Vegas Raiders.

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.