Special Teams Coach Lorig leaving PSU???
- Thread starter Tom McAndrew
- Start date
How did he handle the kicker situation this year? How many returns for touchdowns has the team had since he's the ST coach? 51st in the country and he's being hired away? Good luck coach!
All he has to do is look on this board and he will find it again.
More space on my couch.
We had excellent Kickoffs and top 10 punting. Stout came here booming kicks off the tee, but his punting did improve to a weapon like asset.
Punt block attempts were scarce. Didn't particularly like our "don't rush enough, punter takes 2 extra steps" coverage that eliminated Dotson from doing anything but hand waves.
Kickoff return was largely conservative and lackluster, but it was manned by our pitifully slow and underperforming RB room. No clue why Dotson, Meiga (supposed to be fast), nor Wilson (speed guy they tried to shoe in at WR or CB week to week) didn't start taking these reps.
The big question is: who will coach the Outside LBs?!?!?
Punt block attempts were scarce. Didn't particularly like our "don't rush enough, punter takes 2 extra steps" coverage that eliminated Dotson from doing anything but hand waves.
Kickoff return was largely conservative and lackluster, but it was manned by our pitifully slow and underperforming RB room. No clue why Dotson, Meiga (supposed to be fast), nor Wilson (speed guy they tried to shoe in at WR or CB week to week) didn't start taking these reps.
The big question is: who will coach the Outside LBs?!?!?
Bob, you’re a treasure.
Happy New Year.
Thanks. Same to you. Let’s all have a great 2022.
OK. Next man up. Or at least next individual that identifies as male up. Wait, next human being that identifies as such up. Amy from Jeopardy up? No, still too exclusive. Next living or non-living noun up. My apologies to all adjectives and adverbs.
With the right flight, I can be in Florida tonight just in time to meet the team before curfew and ready to coach tomorrow!!!
Outside of the actual kickers and punters the success of special teams is often beyond the scope of the actual ST coach. Their success is based on the actual belief that the head coach has in their importance, and more importantly how many of his star players will he devote to them. Without the proper ingredients the end product is usually mediocre.
This was predictable to me considering Lorig's quotes in an article last week that confounded me. He reviewed his special team unit's performance and noted some good things and some bad things. He specifically mentioned he was not satisfied with the numbers we produced in the return game. I was flabbergasted by that, how would they have ever been any good? They mandated that our return men fair catch everything up until the MSU game. So he was either criticizing his boss for the very conservative approach or he himself hadn't realized that simply fair catching everything would produce the return averages it did? For a coach that preaches Change the Game for his unit, our special teams as it relates to blocking kicks and returning them is as conservative a unit in the country. I think its fair to say that he and Franklin no longer see eye to eye as it relates to ST.
the conservative play may have come from some of the game turning negative things that happened to our team when rushing punter. Seems like whenever we were aggressive that we wound up hitting the punter in some way that led to drives continuing. It appears we started with the view to not get a penalty, prevent a fake run and catch the ball without a fumble. Granted that Dotson had a couple returns against out manned teams that he did on his skill alone. Not making a case either way, but that seems to be what we were doing punting wise. On KOs for a long time we kept trying to kick near the sideline and pop up inside the 10, but that led to kicks OOB and giving ball on 35. Now the goal is just crush it and give them ball on 25. No return is the goal, which has been okay. I notice that Iowa tries to KO like we used to. Our system requires a KO guy who can put ball at least 70 yds on the fly. Idea is conservative in no return and give them 25, but aggressive style would try and pin with KO. I think we also had some bad experience when teams actually got the returns.
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How do you know anyone “mandated” that the kick off returners fair catch everything? Recall several instances where the did run it out and didn’t get to the 25. Clearly, no one told Dotson to fair catch punts since he had several good ones. Obviously, he exercised judgment on those occasions when he did fair catch. I may be in the minority, but I am generally not a big fan of trying to block punts. Too many instances where it results in a roughing the punter penalty and a first down for the other team. There is a skill to blocking punts without roughing the kicker and very few guys possess it.
I could be misremembering, but I don't believe we actively tried to return many kicks this year, irrespective of blocking. Franklin DID say that it was by design and that we would be happy to take the ball on the 25 this year. Regardless of whether or not you or I believe in the strategy is besides the point, my point was that our special teams coach bemoaned the lack of return(punts/and kickoffs) return yardage this year which seems unusual when we only attempted to return a very small percentage of them. Sort of hard to "CHANGE THE GAME" on special teams when you don't attempt to block punts or return kicks no?
Isn't special teams all about fair catches and going for it on 4th down at midfield?
HAHAHHA. Special teams has been weird for a a while here. I'm not going down the road of knocking Franklin specifically, but certain concepts or unit strategies seem weird to me at times. Remember when Franklin was adamant(pre-stout) that kickoffs needed to be to the corner of the field and the kickoff team would run to the corner to pin the returner into that area? It lead to a RASH of kickoffs that went out of bounce and if ever(I think it was that fat kicker that certainly didn't have Stouts talent) accidentally kicked it to the middle of the field, it would turn into big returns because the kickoff team was pinching to the corner? Franklin would lament the fact that kicker didn't kick it to the right spot on the field. Again, not a bad concept philosophically, like some of or offensive ideas and such, but just small margins to deal with to be really successful. Was it last year or the year before where Gilliken was under siege for every punt? We did some 3 man line for him and people would just get free shots, amazed we didn't have far more blocked kicks, they changed that fortunately. I don't know, I don't know too much ST strategy. With offense and special teams there has just been a lot of times where I sort of say "that did'nt look quite right" or "that seems like a weird thing to do there." I suppose most fan bases feel the same way.
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