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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1981717, member: 289"] About the Kicking Game: [I]Besides being the scene of a never-ending aerial circus, the Carrier Dome should also be heaven for kickers. We’ve had some good ones over the years, and some mediocre ones. We lost one of the very good ones in punter Riley Dixon. He’ll be replaced by redshirt freshman Sterling Hofrichter. Chris Carlson wrote in the Post Standard: “Hofrichter won’t punt the ball as high as Riley Dixon. He won’t punt it as far. He will, however replace the former Syracuse star the best he can.” There’s a ringing endorsement. [/I] He did very well. After an up and down start, they switched him to kicking rugby style and, although I was always afraid he’d get too close to the rushers, (who had more time to get to him), he avoided blocks, (there was one but it wasn’t a full block). And he was able to really boom the ball with the running starts that gave him. He averaged 42.7 yards per punt on the season and 44.6 in the last three games. As has been the case in too many recent seasons, our punting might have been the highlight of the year. [I]Cole Murphy is the placekicker. He’s been pretty good but not dazzling. . He’s hit 29 of 38 field goals in two years, 76%. He made a couple of 50 yarders two years ago but was 3 for 7 from the 40 or beyond last year.[/I] Murphy got off to a decent start in the Dome games but seemed thrown by having to kick in the outdoors, especially a windy day at Connecticut and in the edge of a hurricane at Wake Forest. He also seemed to have hurt himself at one time, although Babers denied it. He wound up missing 8 of 18 field goals and 4 extra points, a dismal year by modern standards. He’s got another year to redeem himself but Babers need to be looking to recruit a kicker to replace him, possibly before he graduates. [I]Brisley Estime is the primary kick returning threat. He averaged 18.2 yards per punt return and took two the distance, one from 74 yards out. He averaged 22 yards a kickoff return. With all the exciting runners and receivers we’ve collected we should have plenty of depth back there.[/I] But Brisley proved to be easily our best kick-returner, once again. He never found the end zone but he averaged 17.7 yards a punt return, the third best average in SU history and the highest in FBS this year. The coaches, early on, wanted Brisley to concentrate on his role as a receiver and took him off return duty for a while but realized freshman Sean Riley wasn’t in the same class. Both players are 5-9 but Brisley is a solidly packed 183 pounds and Riley is supposedly 165. Brisley could break tackles that Riley could not and seemed to have more moves as well. Late in the year they realized that the more times Brisley got the ball, the better and had him returning kickoffs as well. Pitt had Quadree Henderson returning both types of kicks all year, (28 kick-offs, 14 punts) and both ran the ball, (54 carries), and caught it, (23 catches ). That’s what we needed to do with Brisley. We did some of it but not enough. [I]The injury to George Morris hurts our kicking units, as he was one of the most active players covering kick returns. We’ve also got a bunch of guys with the speed and toughness to be “gunners”, so we should be able to find a replacement here. Those same guys might be able to block some kicks. I wish we’d get more aggressive in that department than we have been in recent years. Let’s pull out all the stops.[/I] [I]Overall, I think we’ll at least see “flashes”, (to use a Greg Robinson term), of what we are going to be someday on offense, have a lot of frustration getting off the field on defense but could make some big plays in the kicking game if we choose to go after them. I hope it will be enough.[/I] Morris came back and played well as a gunner. We managed to block 2 kicks in 12 games not enough to matter. We did show flashes on offense. We were great getting off the field on defense. Unfortunately, the other team’s band was playing. But one thing I said when Babers was hired was that “at least our losses will be more interesting now” – and they were. Next year I want to see more interesting wins. I hope –and think- that this will have been the worst team Dino Babers has in his tenure here and that that tenure will not end any time soon. [/QUOTE]

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