Kicking Woes

[Guest]

Article in DMN today about our kicking game..or lack of one.
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[Charleston Pony]

listening to the game and having a hard time understanding why Bennett doesn't give McMurtry a chance to kick FGs and PATs. A missed FG and PAT may well cost us another chance for a win today (down 10-6 as I post this). If these kicks are being missed due to bad snaps or bad holds, the announcers aren't commenting on that. All they are saying is the kicks are very low and being tipped/blocked.

[fbdad]

There was nothing wrong with the hold, the kicker just doesn't get the ball high enough. We went on fourth down and 3-6 yards after the missed extra point within field goal range of a decnt kicker.The kickers performance would not keep him on a high school team let alone Div 1 team.A decent kicker would have kept us in the game.Blown plays by safeties and the kicking game lost it for us. Bartel was trying to hard when we were down and cause interceptions.Bartel will be great next year

[Dement-ed]

Stephenson has had his chance. The blocked field goal barely got 6 feet in the air - Nevada's guys could have blocked that with their elbows (maybe they did). The extra point was shameful. I know the field was chopped up, but it was chopped up for Nevada's kicker, too, and he got the ball up in the air.

Interesting stat from the radio broadcast: TCU's Nick Browne is 18-of-20 this year on FIELD GOALS. Stephenson is 9-of-14 on EXTRA POINTS.

There is absolutely no reason McMurtray shouldn't be kicking from here on out.

[ponymange]

I'm afraid that McMurtray will not see playing time this year if what I have heard through the grapevine is true. I've heard that the other kicker's parents socialize with the coach and also has a contract to provide the coaches cars to drive. It's pretty hard to compete with that.

[Xbox]

Rivals reports that SMU has offered highly touted A&M Consolidated kicker Zach Myatt. He has 11 FG's on the season including 44, 47, 51 and 53 yards. He is a La. Tech verbal so far.

[Fresh]

Great. So if Myatt comes to SMU, and I'm sure he's a good kicker and all, we'd have him, McMurtray, Stephenson and Mentzel on scholarship. With all due respect to Myatt, we don't need him. I've watched McMurtray in the spring and in practice this season, hitting field goals from beyond 50 yards. Does he hit every one? Of course not. But at least he has the leg to get it there. We don't want to burn another scholarship on another kicker. There are too many other holes to fill.

[HorsePower]

Here's a solution for Coach Bennett: Go to Schellas Hyndman's office and get one of the guys on the end of his bench who never get on the field for the soccer team. Every guy on that roster can kick better - a lot better - than what we've seen lately. Diana Kelm from the women's team has a better leg than Stephenson, and maybe better than McMurtray, too. Not that we've had a chance to see him, of course.

[NewSMUFriend]

I am a mom and don't know much about football... why do they have one kicker do the kickoffs and another one do the field goals and extra points and another one do the punts instead of having one person do them all? It seems to me that if the kickoff kicker and the punt kicker can kick the ball as far as they do, why aren't they doing the field goals? My stepson is a freshman this year at SMU and I really had hoped they would have a good team because I remember how much fun football games were for me when I was in college "back in the day"!!!

[Guest]

From DMN article this morning:

Bennett made several questionable decisions, including starting kicker Trent Stephenson after the sophomore missed his fourth extra point of the year and a field goal last week at Rice.

Facing a 10-0 deficit midway through the fourth quarter, SMU used a 29-yard completion from Bartel to John Hampton to set up a short touchdown run by Kris Briggs. Stephenson, who had a field goal blocked on SMU's opening series, then missed the extra point wide left, which left SMU in a 10-6 hole with 7:54 remaining.

Bennett said Chris McMurtray was supposed to kick the extra point, but that McMurtray didn't know it.

Now can anyone tell me what the hell this means? Geez!

[PonyTales]

They use different guys for punting and for placekicks because they're very different skills, and kicking has become a very specialized art. On placekicks, you're driving through the bottom of the ball, kind of like hitting a golf ball with a wedge - if you hit the ball exactly right, it will shoot straight up in the air and carry, end over end, whereas when you're punting, you're trying to lay the ball softly on to your foot and slicing off the side of the ball, ideally creating a perfect spiral. Two very different skills. There are guys who do both at the college level, but very few.

As for placekicks versus kicking off, it's simply a matter of accuracy versus leg strength. On placekicks, leg strength doesn't matter if you can't keep the ball between the posts. On kickoffs, the primary goal is height and distance. If you have a kid who can boom a kickoff into the end zone every time, it doesn't matter how accurate it is. He's either going to kick it over/past the return man, or have enough height on the ball that by the time the ball comes down, the coverage guys will be downfield waiting, daring the return man to bring it out of the end zone. A strong leg on kickoffs is an enormous advantage in the battle for field position.

McMurtray not only has a much stronger leg than Stephenson, he also gets the ball up a lot faster - thereby making it much harder to block. He should be the placekicker. And he's a decent punter. Not great - he doesn't need to replace Mentzel, who's done a nice job this year - but decent. He'd be an able backup if anything happened to Mentzel. He's sort of an insurance policy for punting.

[ponymange]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by SMUStudent06:
<B>From DMN article this morning:

Bennett made several questionable decisions, including starting kicker Trent Stephenson after the sophomore missed his fourth extra point of the year and a field goal last week at Rice.

Facing a 10-0 deficit midway through the fourth quarter, SMU used a 29-yard completion from Bartel to John Hampton to set up a short touchdown run by Kris Briggs. Stephenson, who had a field goal blocked on SMU's opening series, then missed the extra point wide left, which left SMU in a 10-6 hole with 7:54 remaining.

Bennett said Chris McMurtray was supposed to kick the extra point, but that McMurtray didn't know it.

Now can anyone tell me what the hell this means? Geez!</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
_________________
I would like to know what that means as well. If McMurtray was suppose to kick the extra point and didn't know it, who was going to tell him??????? That was a stupid comment by the coach.

[Hoofprint]

Bennett sent a team manager or someone over to McMurtray to tell him to get ready, and that he (McMurtray) was supposed to kick the extra point. The manager told him, but nobody told Stephenson, and by the time Bennett realized it, Stephenson already was on the field. It was a communication breakdown.

[fbdad]

That all sounds like smoke to me. I never saw McMurtray warm up or work out with the kicking tee the entire game including half time. It would have been unwise to throw him in the game cold. Stephenson worked with the tee on the sidelines the whole game not that it helped.He was on the field at half time with the Nevada kicker who was, if you can believe it,smaller than Stephenson. When the Nevada kicker started making 50+ yard shots, Stephenson picked up his tee and left the field.

[Fresh]

Ouch.