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Kicking woes

loopafied68

Sooner commitment
Nov 22, 2021
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I'm wrong a bunch, but I feel like our field goal kicker sucks! I'd rather go for a 4th and 20 than let him kick over 20 yards?!? As a fan, I guess I'm just used to OU having great kicking all the time, every season.
 
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I'm wrong a bunch, but I feel like our field goal kicker sucks! I'd rather go for a 4th and 20 than let him kick over 40 yards?!? As a fan, I guess I'm just used to OU having great kicking all the time, every season.
Not wrong...not sure where he came from, but that has to be a big recruiting need.
 
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He is pitiful..,tells you a lot about what a damn train wreck special teams is. Coach/Coordinator should be shit canned. No delay…on the plane back to Norman.
I 100% agree. Pitiful, see your thesaurus. Let's go for terrible, shitty, pathetic, inept...
 
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He is pitiful..,tells you a lot about what a damn train wreck special teams is. Coach/Coordinator should be shit canned. No delay…on the plane back to Norman.
Maybe the problem is that the coach doesn’t have anyone with talent to coach. Just saying. Who is the special teams coach anyway? Like the old saying “you can’t teach stupid”.
 
Maybe the problem is that the coach doesn’t have anyone with talent to coach. Just saying. Who is the special teams coach anyway? Like the old saying “you can’t teach stupid”.
I was wondering the same thing, about who the special teams coach is.
 
The bigger ? Is he the best of what OU has? I just dont get why the coaches havent tried someone else.
 
Isnt this the kid that was a self proclaimed 5 star kicker out of high school. We do not have a special teams coordinator. Jay Nunez is the special teams analyst. Not 100% sure what that means. There are 4 kickers on the roster hopefully they are not all on scholarship.
 
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Just looked it up Gavin Marshall was the self proclaimed 5 star kicker from IMG. He's a redshirt freshman, Wouldnt hurt to let him kick next week, watched his highlight tape hes got a strong leg.
 
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For short ones, we need to keep him off the right hash mark, for sure. I'd trust him more on the right hash from 40 than 27. Bad angle for his considerable draw. But I said he sucks after the first game, when half his pats were closer to the uprights, than the middle.
 
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I remember the triple digits in that game, in a day when the uni's were extra warm. And that USC was the defending national champs, as the first team to run an I-formation. The had a great run of tailbacks.

Then the next year, with Gomer as OUr head coach, they waxed us in Norman.

AND in 1963, you were still only allowed to substitute one player per play. So it was common that your kicker was also a position player.
 
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OU came close in 1971, 1972, 1973, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1986, 1987 as well..
And maybe in 1957 and 1958.

The 1978 game is the one that sticks out in my mind. OU fumbled the ball 9 times at Nebraska and lost by 3 points. Of course, the Sooners got revenge in the rematch at the Orange Bowl, but that loss at Nebraska cost OU the national championship. The other thing that I remember about that loss is that Kelly Phelps nearly got beheaded on a kickoff return. Still one of the hardest hits I've ever seen in a college football game.
 
The hit on Phelps on the kickoff return should have been ruled a fumble, but wasn’t.
And as great as he was, Billy Sims’ fumble around the 5 yard line late in the game with OU down 17-14 very likely killed OU’s hopes.
In the rematch, OU won 31-24 but gave up two touchdowns late in the game.
Some writers speculated that had OU maintained its 31-10 lead, it might have swayed the pollsters to award OU with a championship.
 
Speaking of kicking woes, has anyone watched college GameDay when they do their field goal segment where people are selected to kick a 25 or 30 yarder for cash. I feel like I could make it. Everyone I've seen kick misses, but Pat McAfee is standing right beside them, on their right, talking smack the entire time. He's like a defender. I would definitely ask him to move, and stay away while I'm kicking. What a kick blocker!
 
It's actually 33 yards which is a different deal. I was never even a moderate athlete. But when I was a manager in high school, just with just a tee, a ball and me, I could make a 25-yarder pretty consistently after a lot of practice. There's a reason they do 33 yards. It's better than a decent challenge. They also snuggle up the surrrounding fans, so that a good athlete can't back up quite as far as they need to give it a good shot.

Also, the former quarterback, Kirk Herbstreit doesn't do a good job of holding for the kick. His leg crowds the ball, further limiting the kicker's shot at giving it a really good kick. And there's a whole lot of pressure. I guess they're up to $100K, now. It was over 90K last week. A lot of us who can make a free throw over two thirds of the time, would be challenged to make one shot for $90,000. There was one kicker a little over a month ago, who made a pretty good straight kick, but it came up a little short.

All those factors were intended when they set this up. Add to it the shortness of time to prepare for it, with many trying is less than kicking shoes, and these results aren't very surprising. Half the people who get their name drawn to take their chance, aren't great athletes. The ones I've heard interviewed weren't even athletes. Several said they'd never kicked a ball.
 
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It's actually 33 yards which is a different deal. I was never even a moderate athlete. But when I was a manager in high school, just with just a tee, a ball and me, I could make a 25-yarder pretty consistently after a lot of practice. There's a reason they do 33 yards. It's better than a decent challenge. They also snuggle up the surrrounding fans, so that a good athlete can't back up quite as far as they need to give it a good shot.

Also, the former quarterback, Kirk Herbstreit doesn't do a good job of holying for the kick. His leg crowds the ball, further limiting the kicker's shot at giving it a really good kick. And there's a whole lot of pressure. I guess they're up to $100K, now. It was over 90K last week. A lot of us who can make a free three over three quarters of the time, would be challenged to make one shot for $90,000. There was one kicker a little over a month ago, who made a pretty good straight kick, but it came up a little short.

All those factors were intended when they set this up. Add to it the shortness of time to prepare for it, with many trying is less than kicking shoes, and these results aren't very surprising.
I didn't realize all that, but it makes sense. I don't think anyone has ever made the winning kick. I'm definitely watching Saturday morning.
 
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The 1978 game is the one that sticks out in my mind. OU fumbled the ball 9 times at Nebraska and lost by 3 points. Of course, the Sooners got revenge in the rematch at the Orange Bowl, but that loss at Nebraska cost OU the national championship. The other thing that I remember about that loss is that Kelly Phelps nearly got beheaded on a kickoff return. Still one of the hardest hits I've ever seen in a college football game.
There was yet another fumble on the Phelps hit that they gave back to OU and the Nebraska fans were absolutely livid about the call. The killer was Sims' fumble inside the NU five yard line. We outplayed NU all game but turnovers destroyed us. Alabama beat Penn State for the NC in the Sugar Bowl but we were better than either of those teams. We beat Nebraska in a rematch in the Orange Bowl in a game that wasn't nearly as close as the final score.
 
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The 1978 game is the one that sticks out in my mind. OU fumbled the ball 9 times at Nebraska and lost by 3 points. Of course, the Sooners got revenge in the rematch at the Orange Bowl, but that loss at Nebraska cost OU the national championship. The other thing that I remember about that loss is that Kelly Phelps nearly got beheaded on a kickoff return. Still one of the hardest hits I've ever seen in a college football game.
I just watched the video of Kelly Phelps taking the hit. Damn, I'm surprised his helmet stayed on!
 
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