🏈 Where is the problem?

[Jseakin]

I refuse to be one of those fans that starts ranting about the team or better yet a particular player so instead I will ask what is the issue with our kick off coverage? Is there anything in particular that can be pointed to other than just saying "mental errors?"

What are some other REASONABLE things that you guys notice the team needs to get better at quickly? And please don't just start player bashing. We know if your first response is M.Johnson...... that its likely negative and has already been expressed.

 

[russb8903]

On kick coverage, I'd venture to say it's people being greedy trying to get the tackle and blowing their job. Also, I haven't been impressed with our pass coverage as a whole.

 

[Jseakin]

On kick coverage, I'd venture to say it's people being greedy trying to get the tackle and blowing their job. Also, I haven't been impressed with our pass coverage as a whole.

I am asking on the coverage part because I really dont know, what are some common things other than what you mentioned that plague teams on coverage? I wouldn't say our pass coverage has been that bad overall I really just believe last night there was a mismatch on Johnson with height and size and since our focus was so much on getting to the QB they dumped many passes underneath to punish us in the 1st half.

 

[Kozlowski]

KO coverage starts with the kicker! Tiffin can kick a 55 yd FG without a tee but cant get a KO inside the 10 with one:headscratch:

 

[Big_Fan]

KO coverage starts with the kicker! Tiffin can kick a 55 yd FG without a tee but cant get a KO inside the 10 with one:headscratch:

I think we should recruit a student out of the general student body to kick off. If you can kick it out of the endzone, you can play for the Tide.

Lame maybe...but with soccer as popular as it is, surely there is someone on campus who can consistently put it in the EZ.

 

[lilstat]

Didnt we pick up a recruit this year that can booom them out the back of the endzone ? Dont think he can play until next year, but still

 

[ElephantStomp]

Our kicker and our kick off coverage are killing us. Half the time when Kiffin kicks he makes my 4 1/2 yr old son look like a 5 star kicker right now.

Cory

 

[porkchop]

KO coverage starts with the kicker! Tiffin can kick a 55 yd FG without a tee but cant get a KO inside the 10 with one:headscratch:

What Lenny said.

Honestly, I think a lot of our problems stem from the fact that we can't get it into the end zone to save our life. I mean, I played against guys in HS that were not kickers, but athletes that could kick and could put it in the end zone. I just watched UCLA beat Tennessee, by putting it 7 yards deep every time. We can't do it though.

 

[TerryP]

KO coverage starts with the kicker! Tiffin can kick a 55 yd FG without a tee but cant get a KO inside the 10 with one:headscratch:

Come on. That's a large exaggeration.

On kick coverage, I'd venture to say it's people being greedy trying to get the tackle and blowing their job. Also, I haven't been impressed with our pass coverage as a whole.

That's not a bad assessment.

Against Va. Tech, the lane that Dyrell Roberts took was supposed to be covered by Courtney Upshaw and Roy Upchurch.

Upshaw was taken out of the play early and his gap was to the inside of Roy. Roy ended up getting pushed further and further outside and by the time he was around the 20 yard line he was a good 5-6 yards outside of his assigned lane (towards the sideline.)

This past weekend the breakdown happened on the opposite side: Woodson and Johnson. Johnson, like Upchurch, wasn't in position. However, based on what I saw it wasn't as much a situation of him being out his lane as it was just taking the wrong route/angle. (that's understandable considering T.Y. Hilton's speed)

One, I see a lot of over-pursuit. Then, add a little bump and these guys are a step out of their lane when they are around mid-field, yards out of their lane by the time they get to the ball carrier.

 

[TerryP]

Didnt we pick up a recruit this year that can booom them out the back of the endzone ? Dont think he can play until next year, but still

Cade Foster.

The story line from this past weekend had him kicking six out of the back of the end zone with two splitting the uprights.

Granted, he'll end up moving back in college, but if the ball is high enough to split the uprights in high school that ball is in the back of the end zone in college.

 

[planomateo]

Cade Foster, not only that, but he plays LB and likes to hit...and benches in the neighborhood of 370.

 

[kc]

YOU MUST STAY IN YOUR LANES on kick off coverage. It is not just the kickers problem. Our outside runners are crashing in WAY too soon. To me this looks like the problem, plus some over pursuit by the inside people.

 

[TerryP]

Cade Foster.

The story line from this past weekend had him kicking six out of the back of the end zone with two splitting the uprights.

Granted, he'll end up moving back in college, but if the ball is high enough to split the uprights in high school that ball is in the back of the end zone in college.

Here's the story:

By BRANDON GEORGE / The Dallas Morning News
bgeorge@dallasnews.com

When Southlake Carroll kicker and middle linebacker, Cade Foster, 6’2 220, walks onto the field for pregame warm-ups, opposing heads turn. A common reaction: “That’s the kicker? How big are the other players?” At 6-2 and 220 pounds, Foster isn’t your typical kicker. He has broad shoulders and bulging biceps that complement his strong legs.

“He’s pretty impressive when he comes on the field in those tight shirts,” said Plano West coach Mike Hughes, whose team lost to Carroll, 49-20, two weeks ago at SMU in the season’s opening week. “He’s one of the best players we’ve faced. He certainly doesn’t look like a kicker.”

Though kicking is Foster’s ticket to college ? he’s orally committed to Alabama ? he also starts at middle linebacker. That’s a rare combination even for a high school player, especially one who grew up playing select soccer and didn’t give football a try until the seventh grade at Fort Worth Trinity Valley. “I was horrible at it,” Foster recalls. “I was clumsy.” Everything changed when Foster transferred to Carroll ISD the next year.

Before the start of the first day of eighth-grade football practice, Foster watched teammates trying to kick field goals. He had never attempted one but figured that with his soccer background, he might have a knack. “I boomed one from about 30 yards, and it would have been good from about 55,” Foster said. “And everybody was just kind of staring in awe. Everyone turned around with gaping mouths and was like, ‘What is wrong with this kid?’ “

Foster kept moving back, 5 yards at a time, and hadn’t missed when the coaches hit the field. “Someone said something to the coach, and the coach said, ‘OK, let’s see it,’ “ Foster said. “I kicked like a 55-yarder and made it.” Just like that, Carroll, which has produced NFL kickers Kris Brown of the Houston Texans and Garrett Hartley of the New Orleans Saints, had its next standout kicker in waiting.

But Foster, a third-generation college football player, following his father, Dan, who played cornerback at Maryland and his grandfather, Herman, who played offensive guard at Texas and UTEP, fast became more than that. He started working at linebacker as a sophomore, when coach Hal Wasson came over from Keller Fossil Ridge. Last year, he started at middle linebacker and finished with 96 tackles and 12 sacks. What’s more, 15 of his tackles came after he kicked off. “He gets jacked up on kickoffs,” said Carroll defensive end Jackson Richards, who has committed to Texas Tech. “He’s pretty much the strongest kid on the team, and he runs a 4.6 40. He’s a freak. Whenever we were freshmen, some of us nicknamed him Juice.”

An emotional and spiritual team leader, Foster was selected as a Carroll team captain this season. He had 11 tackles and a sack against Plano West. And six of his eight kickoffs went out of the end zone for touchbacks. On one of the two that didn’t, Foster tackled the returner, causing a fumble. “We’ve had to get on him some when he didn’t kick the ball out of the end zone,” Wasson said. “It perturbed him, and he went down there and went kamikaze on the returner when we needed him filling the lane and acting as a safety valve.”

Foster said he’s often amused watching kickers try to make tackles in college or the NFL. “I always want to scream at the TV when I see those guys,” Foster said. “They just wait back there and they normally end up back-pedaling and falling on their butts and making a big goof of themselves. So I’m looking forward to changing the stereotype.”

Notable: Foster credits a lot of his development as a kicker to attending camps hosted by West Coast kicking guru Chris Sailer and former Dallas Cowboys kicker Chris Boniol, who serves as his private coach. ... Foster’s kickoffs last season were touchbacks 72 percent of the time. ... Foster was 11-for-15 on field goal attempts in each of his freshman and sophomore seasons. ... Last year, Foster made 6-of-9 field goal attempts, with his only misses coming from 50, 51 and 52 yards out.

My note: In his game last night, a 63 - 13 win over Houston Bellaire, Foster had six kickoffs go beyond the endzone (two went through the uprights). From his MLB position, he had 10 tackles; as a kicker, he made one FG of 30 yards and another at 45 yards. The 45-yard FG came after he made an interception that set up the FG.​

 

[UAgrad93]

KO coverage has been an achilles for us for awhile. everyone is assigned a lane and they are all told to get around the block either to the left or right. All it takes is one to go opposite of the call and that opens up a large gap. Another problem is that our safeties get themselves sucked up to far into the mess and then can't recover. Their problem is that they want to get in on the tackle.

 

[TheChief]

Every year we have this conversation, and every year I get told that we can't give a kicker a scholly. If the team can't afford a scholly, settle for what you get. You can't complain that your car has no pep when all you can afford is a used Pinto.

 

[Kozlowski]

Tiffin has kicked off 164 times in his career at Bama. 6 have gone for touchbacks.

 

[alagator]

Tiffin has kicked off 164 times in his career at Bama. 6 have gone for touchbacks.

The kid is what the kid is. I cannot blame him toooooo much if his leg strength is insufficient to reach the end-zone consistently. If roughly 66% of his kickoffs reached the end zone you could find fault with the other 34% that do not. But, using your numbers, when only 4% of his kickoffs result in touchbacks, I cannot argue that he is not living up to his potential when 96% do not.

Now, his head-scratching inconsistency with reasonable FGs is a whole other story. One thing is certain, he may have the raw number of makes his father had but he is not the kicker his father was. But that was a pretty darn high standard to reach anyway.

But, that said, UA does need to find someone who can be a weapon with the ball on a kicking tee. Maybe the Texas kid can be just that for us. It would be about time.

 

[kc]

The kid is what the kid is. I cannot blame him toooooo much if his leg strength is insufficient to reach the end-zone consistently. If roughly 66% of his kickoffs reached the end zone you could find fault with the other 34% that do not. But, using your numbers, when only 4% of his kickoffs result in touchbacks, I cannot argue that he is not living up to his potential when 96% do not.

Now, his head-scratching inconsistency with reasonable FGs is a whole other story. One thing is certain, he may have the raw number of makes his father had but he is not the kicker his father was. But that was a pretty darn high standard to reach anyway.

But, that said, UA does need to find someone who can be a weapon with the ball on a kicking tee. Maybe the Texas kid can be just that for us. It would be about time.

Amen.

 

[RollTideinGA]

I watched alot of CFB on Saturday. And I saw alot of kickers kicking it out of the endzone. Why cant we get one of those?

 

[Jseakin]

I have always questioned as well why we werent out scouting the soccer team or something to find someone just for kick offs. I understand with field goals that we need accuracy but on the kick offs I would love to see someone just blasting the ball.

I watched kids in high school goofing off and kicking off and it never once failed that some soccer kid was kicking MUCH further than anyone.