SWC75
Bored Historian
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THE KICKING GAME
I prefer the old-fashioned term “the kicking game” to “special teams”, since all special teams plays are plays where the ball gets kicked and, well, we still call it “football”. We are in good shape with our actual kickers. Riley Dixon was probably our MVP last year, (we’ve had too many years recently where the punter was probably our best player). He averaged 42.4 yard per punt. Only 23 of 60 were returned. The same number wound up inside the 20. 17 of them went more than 50 yards. He’s also the holder for the place-kicks and threw a touchdown pass on a fake. He was going to be our emergency quarterback if all four of our regular quarterbacks were hurt, (which they all were but fortunately they were never all out at the same time). He’s a big kid at 6-5, 220 and is a football player, not just a kicker.
Cole Murphy made 13 of 16 field goals, including a couple of 50 yarders and 11 of 12 extra points. He kicked off as well, for an average of 58.6 yards. That’s not quite to the end zone but with touch-backs coming out to the 25 now, kicking it to the goal line is usually the better option: we gained 18 yards per kickoff return and the option gained 20. He again has beaten out Ryan Norton, who did our kick-offs and most of the place-kicking the previous year. He’s kicked 14 of 22 field goals and 36 of 38 extra points. He actually has sent his kick-offs farther than Murphy, (60.7), but that puts more of them in the end zone.
It’s not the kickers that are the problem. It’s everything else. When you offense is struggling, as ours has for year, you need to get big plays from the kicking game to give them a leg up. Not just field goals, extra points and good punts, but kick returns and blocked kicks. Last year, when we really needed help, we never blocked a kick and never returned a kick for a score. Our opponents blocked a punt and returned one kick-off and two punts for a score. Contrast that with 1997, when Quinton Spotswood tied an NCAA record with 4 punt returns for touchdown, Kevin Johnson added two kick-off returns for scores but they did it for a Donovan McNabb team that averaged 35 points a game. We need something like that now. We don’t have Spotswood or Johnson but we do have Estime, Phillips, Ismael, Fredericks, Strickland and Perkins, (or maybe 5-6 165 walk-on water sprite Jacob Hill). Somebody in that group ought to be able to get past the 20 on kickoffs and do more than fair catch punts. But we also need to block for them: whoever was returning kickoffs last year seemed to be a bug on a windshield at the 20 yard line each time.
Kicking decent punts, making reasonable field goals and drilling extra points is something we should be able to expect in this day and age- and in the Dome, (Ben Schwartzwalder ATTEMPTED his first field goal at SU in 1957, his 9th year as head coach because ti was one platoon ball and somebody who was in there for other reason had to do the kicking). Good kicking is not something exceptional. It’s the kcik returners and rushers who have the chance to do something exceptional for the team and they haven’t been doing it.
Basically, I think the offense will rise to the level of mediocrity, the defense will fall to it and the kicking game will stay there. That adds up to overall mediocrity, an improvement over 3-9, even if it isn’t where we ultimately want to be. If mediocrity can give us a 6-6 record, the season will have been at least a measured success. But our opposition will have something to say about that.
I prefer the old-fashioned term “the kicking game” to “special teams”, since all special teams plays are plays where the ball gets kicked and, well, we still call it “football”. We are in good shape with our actual kickers. Riley Dixon was probably our MVP last year, (we’ve had too many years recently where the punter was probably our best player). He averaged 42.4 yard per punt. Only 23 of 60 were returned. The same number wound up inside the 20. 17 of them went more than 50 yards. He’s also the holder for the place-kicks and threw a touchdown pass on a fake. He was going to be our emergency quarterback if all four of our regular quarterbacks were hurt, (which they all were but fortunately they were never all out at the same time). He’s a big kid at 6-5, 220 and is a football player, not just a kicker.
Cole Murphy made 13 of 16 field goals, including a couple of 50 yarders and 11 of 12 extra points. He kicked off as well, for an average of 58.6 yards. That’s not quite to the end zone but with touch-backs coming out to the 25 now, kicking it to the goal line is usually the better option: we gained 18 yards per kickoff return and the option gained 20. He again has beaten out Ryan Norton, who did our kick-offs and most of the place-kicking the previous year. He’s kicked 14 of 22 field goals and 36 of 38 extra points. He actually has sent his kick-offs farther than Murphy, (60.7), but that puts more of them in the end zone.
It’s not the kickers that are the problem. It’s everything else. When you offense is struggling, as ours has for year, you need to get big plays from the kicking game to give them a leg up. Not just field goals, extra points and good punts, but kick returns and blocked kicks. Last year, when we really needed help, we never blocked a kick and never returned a kick for a score. Our opponents blocked a punt and returned one kick-off and two punts for a score. Contrast that with 1997, when Quinton Spotswood tied an NCAA record with 4 punt returns for touchdown, Kevin Johnson added two kick-off returns for scores but they did it for a Donovan McNabb team that averaged 35 points a game. We need something like that now. We don’t have Spotswood or Johnson but we do have Estime, Phillips, Ismael, Fredericks, Strickland and Perkins, (or maybe 5-6 165 walk-on water sprite Jacob Hill). Somebody in that group ought to be able to get past the 20 on kickoffs and do more than fair catch punts. But we also need to block for them: whoever was returning kickoffs last year seemed to be a bug on a windshield at the 20 yard line each time.
Kicking decent punts, making reasonable field goals and drilling extra points is something we should be able to expect in this day and age- and in the Dome, (Ben Schwartzwalder ATTEMPTED his first field goal at SU in 1957, his 9th year as head coach because ti was one platoon ball and somebody who was in there for other reason had to do the kicking). Good kicking is not something exceptional. It’s the kcik returners and rushers who have the chance to do something exceptional for the team and they haven’t been doing it.
Basically, I think the offense will rise to the level of mediocrity, the defense will fall to it and the kicking game will stay there. That adds up to overall mediocrity, an improvement over 3-9, even if it isn’t where we ultimately want to be. If mediocrity can give us a 6-6 record, the season will have been at least a measured success. But our opposition will have something to say about that.