Kicking, punting article - only two P5 ST coaches have kicking or punting experience

[DancingRabbit]

Pretty good article and of course it's a topic that gets a lot of Dawg fans fired up.

Do we send all of our kickers to off-season camps? Since you might not want use one of the 9 on-field coaches, is this an area you could use a good "off-field" assistant?

So far, so good with our FG kicking this year. If we don't get off to a fast start Saturday the kicking game might be crucial.


http://www.cbssports.com/collegefoot...unting-coaches

[Rayburn8]

Graves looked really good last week. He made a 38 and 32 harder if I remember correctly one from the right hash. He nailed both down the middle and the 38 probably would of been good from 48.

[TopDog58]

Its a crap shoot position. Joey Judge is the Patriots ST coach. What kind of advice can a former MSU bench warming QB give to one of the NFL's best kickers?

[Lumpy Chucklelips]

I've linked this site before. If we need a punter, all we have to do is get one from here. I wish we would use it. And there have been some really good ones. You'll see one this weekend wearing purple and gold.

http://www.prokickaustralia.com/

Click on "players" to see a list of all of the punters they have sent to college football and the NFL.

[Really Clark?]

That is a good facility. But if Logan keeps punting like he did Sat we will be ok. That one kick that our players couldn't find and went into the end zone had an impressive amount of hang time. We had what? 4-5 guys down there playing a game of hokey pokey and ate a sandwich before that ball landed.

[Todd4State]

That was a good article and it does all go back to the limit on assistant coaches, which I think should be increased by at least one. As far as the concern about kicking coaches not knowing special teams schematically, I think the solution there is to have two special teams coaches- one who is the kicking coach and then someone like Greg Knox who also coaches another position in addition to special teams- and he is the one that handles all of the special teams "strategy" more of less as well as the return guys. Unless you find a kicking guru that can actually handle all aspects of the kicking game of course.

Someone on here told me about a month or two ago that we use Kohl's kicking camps.

I have watched Westin Graves a lot in high school and to be honest he didn't really stand out to me. But seeing him Saturday night- he looks like a totally different guy. Someone did a great job with him. Honestly, I think our actual specialists are pretty good- Sobiesk was good, but had limited range, Bell, Cooke, DePasquale, Hutchins was a good punter. I think most of our special teams issues are things like what we saw Saturday- muffed punt and then we got surprised on an onside kick and botched it up and also fumbled a short kickoff that cost us field position and was almost a turnover. I think the other thing that is frustrating about our special teams is Dan has had a habit of getting "cute" and it usually is absolutely frustrating- kicking the ball off short intentionally (yes, I know the stats say it is better- but to me it's also a little bit riskier), having Robert Johnson exclusively as a blocker in the return position, and then there was the general sloppiness of special teams in 2013 where we had punts blocked, bad snaps and it was pretty much a circus.

I also think there are a lot of questions as far as why certain guys are or are not returning kicks as well.

But that said- I wouldn't be surprised at all if we are better at special teams this year. Holloway took one back to the house, blocked a punt, and our kickers had a great night minus the kickoffs. And even then in the postgame show Dan made it sound like we were trying to kick for the endzone and not be cute. Really the only thing I would change personnel wise would be to let someone other than Ross return punts and just let him focus on slot WR and maybe add a veteran or two to the kickoff team for some experience.

[smootness]

We don't need a kicking specialist.