FILE - In this Saturday, Aug. 17, 2019, file photo, New England Patriots kicker Stephen Gostkowski looks at the scoreboard in the second half of a preseason NFL football game against the Tennessee Titans in Nashville, Tenn. The Patriots have placed kicker Stephen Gostkowski on injured reserve. The team announced the move Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2019 but didn’t disclose the 35-year-old’s injury. (AP Photo/Mark Zaleski, File)

For the first time since 2010, the New England Patriots will have someone other than Stephen Gostkowski kicking extra points and field goals.

In fact, they’ll have that someone doing it for the rest of the 2019 season.

Gostkowski has been placed on the injured reserve list and, according to ESPN, has a left hip problem that will require season-ending surgery.

Eyebrows were raised when ESPN reported earlier in the day Wednesday that the Patriots were set to work out several free agent kickers later in the day, as they indeed did at Gillette Stadium.

At first that was thought to be a move to push Gostkowski, who has missed four extra points and a field goal over the last three weeks.

But Patriots coach Bill Belichick said during his Wednesday press conference that anything involving kickers was not for that purpose.

“I don’t really think any of that’s related to competition, no,” he said.

Gostkowski last missed games in the 2010 season, when his season ended due to a torn quadriceps muscle. That year kicker Shayne Graham was brought in to finish the season.

The only other time another place kicker was brought in by the Patriots since Gostkowski, as a rookie beat out veteran Martin Gramtica for the job, was at the start of the 2011 training camp, presumably as insurance if Gostkowski hadn’t been fully recovered. Former UMass kicker Chris Koeppelin was in camp, but was released at the end of that summer.

Gostkowski was drafted in the fourth round in 2006 after the popular Adam Vinatieri left for the Indianapolis Colts as a free agent. Since then he has become the Patriots all-time leading scorer.

Gostkowski was signed to a two-year deal by the Patriots as an unrestricted free agent this offseason.

But this season eyebrows were raised when he began missing extra points. When asked Wednesday if he was concerned about the field goal unit, Belichick said “Yeah, I think as a team, there’s a lot of things that we can do better, so we’re working every area to improve. I think we can improve in all three phases of the game and within those phases there’s a lot of things we can work on there as well.

“We need to work on everything, it’s barely October. We’ve got a long way to go.”

But Gostkowski’s long way ended Wednesday. Reportedly, he should be able to return in 2020.

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