Narveson to Transfer

[khardbored]

Power 5 kickers / kicking has always been an enigma for me... It's like there are 64ish spots for kick off & FG/PAT. With the number of high school boys in the USA you'd think every single P5 team could have an excellent kicker every single year. My HS team used a kid from the soccer team. He did three things all practice; practiced kick-offs, FGs, and PATs.

Why aren't they all great?

Another factor is that it's easier to kick in high school than college. In HS, you're allowed to use a tee for field goals and PAT's ... not in college. Also, the uprights are nearly 5 feet wider in HS. I would imagine there are a lot of HS kids who look like pretty good kickers until they try kicking under college rules.

 

[CyCloned]

From Big12Sports.com, for 2019

View attachment 69105

Adding a touchback/kickoff column:
WV 0.396
OSU 0.429
KU 0.278
OU 0.554
TCU 0.319
KSU 0.403
ISU 0.162
UT 0.595
BU 0.488
TT 0.486

Good info. I stand corrected, sort of. ISU still is dead last in the conference by a huge amount. Just feel like it could be a lot better.

 

[agrabes]

Good info. I stand corrected, sort of. ISU still is dead last in the conference by a huge amount. Just feel like it could be a lot better.

To be fair though, it's clearly been our strategy to shave yards by baiting the other team into trying a return ever since the touchback was moved out to the 25. We have come out yards ahead 90%+ of the time with the other team starting short of the 25. Before they implemented the fair catch goes to the 25 rule, we would regularly have teams starting at the 18-20 yard line and at least once or twice a game they are starting at the 15 or worse.

It's actually an effective strategy for us to not kick the ball out of the end zone.

 

[cyclones500]

To be fair though, it's clearly been our strategy to shave yards by baiting the other team into trying a return ever since the touchback was moved out to the 25. We have come out yards ahead 90%+ of the time with the other team starting short of the 25. Before they implemented the fair catch goes to the 25 rule, we would regularly have teams starting at the 18-20 yard line and at least once or twice a game they are starting at the 15 or worse.

It's actually an effective strategy for us to not kick the ball out of the end zone.

If that's the strategy, it explains the short-kicking, but I'm willing to trade the possible yardage difference to minimize return teams from having any chance to gain yardage. Maybe I'm old school/pre-touchback-to-25.

 

[CyCloned]

To be fair though, it's clearly been our strategy to shave yards by baiting the other team into trying a return ever since the touchback was moved out to the 25. We have come out yards ahead 90%+ of the time with the other team starting short of the 25. Before they implemented the fair catch goes to the 25 rule, we would regularly have teams starting at the 18-20 yard line and at least once or twice a game they are starting at the 15 or worse.

It's actually an effective strategy for us to not kick the ball out of the end zone.

Until the guy that is the best returner in the country takes back the opening kickoff....

No, I agree that the team has done a great job in kick coverage for most of the year. I personally would rather the other team just start at the 25.

 

[Cyinthenorth]

Another factor is that it's easier to kick in high school than college. In HS, you're allowed to use a tee for field goals and PAT's ... not in college. Also, the uprights are nearly 5 feet wider in HS. I would imagine there are a lot of HS kids who look like pretty good kickers until they try kicking under college rules.

To piggy back here, I just don't think the talent to kick a football grows on trees either. My class 3A high school (Iowa) almost never even kicked PAT's. It wasn't a very good program, might've made state once in my 4 years of HS, but more often that not would go for it on every 4th down inside the 35 and almost always go for 2 after a TD. Not sure if that experience is unique to my school or not, but I seem to remember a lot of opponents doing the same.

 

[jbhtexas]

To be fair though, it's clearly been our strategy to shave yards by baiting the other team into trying a return ever since the touchback was moved out to the 25. We have come out yards ahead 90%+ of the time with the other team starting short of the 25. Before they implemented the fair catch goes to the 25 rule, we would regularly have teams starting at the 18-20 yard line and at least once or twice a game they are starting at the 15 or worse.

It's actually an effective strategy for us to not kick the ball out of the end zone.

Just going by the averages in the table I posted, and if my math is right...

ISU's average kickoff was 57.9 yards with an average net of 39.6 yards, so the average return would be 57.9 - 39.6 = 18.3 yards. However, that doesn't match up with (1056)/(74-12)=17.0 yd/return. Maybe I don't understand the table correctly.

Assuming kickoff from the 35 yd line with a 57.9 kickoff, the receiving team would get the ball at the 7.1 yd line.

Adding the 18.3 average return would put the average starting position at the 25.4 yd line.

Adding the 17 yd average return would put the average starting position at the 24.1 yd line.

 

[Clonefan94]

To piggy back here, I just don't think the talent to kick a football grows on trees either. My class 3A high school (Iowa) almost never even kicked PAT's. It wasn't a very good program, might've made state once in my 4 years of HS, but more often that not would go for it on every 4th down inside the 35 and almost always go for 2 after a TD. Not sure if that experience is unique to my school or not, but I seem to remember a lot of opponents doing the same.

I think most people under-estimate how hard it actually is to kick a field goal. I was pretty athletic growing up and my parents next door neighbor when I was in junior high and high school, was a back-up kicker at Michigan St. in the late 70s. So he did take some time to teach me a few things about kicking (granted it was a lot different back then). None the less, I could never pick it up. Anything outside of 25 yards was pretty much impossible for me.

So it's not just a matter of teaching a kid how to do it. There is a talent you have to have for kicking the ball. It's such a niche spot on the team, I'm not sure how many kids who dream of playing football think, "I want to be the kicker." Most probably think QB, reciever, linebacker etc. I fully believe that this isn't something you can just teach someone to do. Then add the head games to it and it's on a whole new level.

After trying for a few years to get a handle on it, it blows my mind that anyone can even kick the football 50 yards, let alone do it accurately.

 

[dafarmer]

How many times did the opposing team get to start at the 35 because our kicks went out of bounds?

 

[Al_4_State]

I feel like Mike Zimmer of the Vikings and Campbell could take Adam Vinatieri and give him the shanks.

Kicking haunted both ISU and the Vikings long before Campbell or Zimmer.

 

[CyHans]

I remember reading about him when we first signed him. I was thinking that we finally had a kicker that could hit a long FG if we ever needed it. It sucks that he didn't pan out here, but hopefully he ends up somewhere that's a better fit.

FWIW, I would hate to be a kicker. You could hit 99 out of 100 field goals, but if that one miss costs you a game, that's what people will remember.

For sure, just ask Gary Anderson

 

[Cyinthenorth]

Kicking haunted both ISU and the Vikings long before Campbell or Zimmer.

I want to say his post was tongue in cheek. Vinatieri has been awful this year (yes I know, he's like 47)

 

[Dolokaju]

I remember reading about him when we first signed him. I was thinking that we finally had a kicker that could hit a long FG if we ever needed it. It sucks that he didn't pan out here, but hopefully he ends up somewhere that's a better fit.

FWIW, I would hate to be a kicker. You could hit 99 out of 100 field goals, but if that one miss costs you a game, that's what people will remember.

He did have a big one against Texas...

 

[agrabes]

Just going by the averages in the table I posted, and if my math is right...

ISU's average kickoff was 57.9 yards with an average net of 39.6 yards, so the average return would be 57.9 - 39.6 = 18.3 yards. However, that doesn't match up with (1056)/(74-12)=17.0 yd/return. Maybe I don't understand the table correctly.

Assuming kickoff from the 35 yd line with a 57.9 kickoff, the receiving team would get the ball at the 7.1 yd line.

Adding the 18.3 average return would put the average starting position at the 25.4 yd line.

Adding the 17 yd average return would put the average starting position at the 24.1 yd line.

Yeah, I was having a bit of trouble understanding what each item in that table meant. But I think the table is missing a key statistic - the fair caught kickoffs that go back to the 25 yard line, unless they are counted as touchbacks. They should be, but I feel like we would have way more than 12 if they were counted. We also don't know for sure how those numbers are being counted in the statistics - is a fair catch on the 10 yard line counted as a 0 yard return, a 15 yard return, or a touchback?

But let's say you're right and the average is correct at an average start of 25. That's still a little misleading. The average start may be the 25 yard line, but that doesn't mean it's the most common start. Let's look at the K-State game for example. They had 3 kick returns for a total of 104 yards per ESPN's stats. That's an average return of 34.6 yards per return. However, that includes one 93 yard return greatly increasing the average. The returns were 4 yards, 7 yards, and 93 yards. If you assume the average kickoff of 58 yards starting from the 35, then the ball typically landed at the 7 yard line. So 2/3 of the time when a return was attempted the other team started from inside the 15 yard line. 1/3 times we let them break loose.

The K-State game is an extreme example, but if you look at it over the season and had a list of each starting position after the kickoff for the opposing team I believe you'll see that the majority of the time they started their drives from inside the 25 and the vast majority inside the 30. It seems to me that ever since the 25 yard line touchback rule was implemented, our kickers started aiming to hit between the 5-10 yard line to bait a return. In the past, you could see that in situations where we couldn't afford a possible good return, we kicked deeper. I'm not sure if this year we had a guy with the big leg to consistently hit it that deep though.

 

[danielyp29]

Another factor is that it's easier to kick in high school than college. In HS, you're allowed to use a tee for field goals and PAT's ... not in college. Also, the uprights are nearly 5 feet wider in HS. I would imagine there are a lot of HS kids who look like pretty good kickers until they try kicking under college rules.

I believe he didn't use a tee in HS to prep for the transition to college so that part shouldn't have been an adjustment. if anything it might've been a timing thing he never got down. a lot easier to kick with the holder/stand at camps and impress than to get timing with LS/holder and kicking with that.

 

[clonehenge]

Never too soon.

Meh, that one didn't bother me. I didn't expect the Vikes to win that game and that Vikings team wasn't going to go any further in the playoffs that year.

 

[Scott34]

It took forever for ISU to get a legit QB. We now have that in Purdy, hopefully the same happens with a kicker. For a walk on, Assaley is decent. Hopefully he can work on his accuracy this offseason and tighten things up a bit.

 

[TedKumsher]

Fair enough. But with the way kids are being specialized these days you'd think there would be some kicking academy somewhere churning out Mason Crosby's one after the other by now. Maybe I need to develop a business plan and get some investors...

Like Kohl's Kicking Camps where ISU got Narveson from?

 

[weR138]

Like Kohl's Kicking Camps where ISU got Narveson from?

No.

 

[Allikat]

Thanks, JBH. Not a single one, including the blue bloods, coming anywhere close to 80%.

But we need to be better than 16.2% - over 10% worse than the next team (Kansas). 40% is a good benchmark that would help our game management considerably.