John Papuchis evaluates competition to become Florida State’s kicker

Spring practice is a time for positional competitions and one of the key battles at Florida State is at the kicker spot. Incumbent kicker Ryan Fitzgerald is going up against ETSU transfer Tyler Keltner for the starting role.

Seminoles special teams coordinator and defensive ends coach John Papuchis spoke with the media over the weekend and was asked about the burgeoning competition.

“So far, the competition has been really good,” Papuchis said. “The thing that I do like about the competition is that you can feel those two guys pushing each other. But also, what I’ve been proud to see from both of them is also supporting each other. Because you want the competitiveness within a team structure. I seehen Tyler makes a kick, Ryan’s the first over over there to say something positive to him and then vice versa. When Ryan makes a kick, Tyler does the same thing.”

Fitzgerald was 12 of 20 on kicks lasts season for the Florida State as the team’s starting kicker. He was the only player to attempt a field goal the entire season.

The redshirt junior was also the Seminoles’ starting kicker in 2021 as well, connecting on 10 of his 13 attempts.

Keltner was 17-for-23 last season with three of his misses coming from 53 yards out. In 2021, he was 18 of 23 on kicks.

Papuchis said their are different ways they look at evaluating the Florida State kicker competition.

“There’s a couple of different ways in which we grade it,” Papuchis said. “One of them is that we chart, in the spring because we’re going to practice every other day, they all go through a kick chart. Each one of those kid charts, we keep track of tallying both on a daily basis and then on the cumulative basis. Then they have their team reps with the full team. That’s in a separate categories. All those are graded and statistically, we keep records on how they went. Then at the end of practice, they have the game winning field role opportunities where they get to be out in front of the whole team and have an opportunity to kick a game winning kick. Many of the team scenarios in scrimmages will be evaluated.”

But it is not just a pure number games, Papuchis said. Not every kick is made or missed the same, and they are going to make sure they get as much data as they can in order to make the best decision.

“That’s a big piece of it, just the raw numbers of evaluating the kicks and the number of makes and how they do it,” Papuchis said. “But then there’s also the the eye test that as a coach, you evaluate to see who’s hitting the ball well because not all misses are the same. Not all makes are the same. There is that subjective piece to the evaluation. But I try to stick to the numbers as most as much as I can because we do want this to be an earned competition.”