Michigan STC J.B. Brown weighs in on plan for Tommy Doman amid struggles
ANN ARBOR – Michigan Wolverines senior punter Tommy Doman has struggled at points this season with his consistency, and his average yards per punt is down over 3 yards from last year (44.3 to 41.1 avg).
There has been good and bad on both ends of the spectrum, but last week’s performance saw him average only 36.6 yards per kick. In the road losses at Washington and Illinois, he averaged 37.0 and 32.7 yards, respectively.
Michigan will play a game on Saturday against No. 1 Oregon that will require all phases to play a clean game. The last time U-M hosted one of its new conference foes, Week 4 vs. USC, Doman averaged 49.1 yards per punt on 8 attempts and put 5 of them inside the 20-yard line.
His struggles go against the goal of flipping the field position and playing complementary football. Michigan says it has a plan to help him get back on track, hopefully this week against the nation’s top team.
“We’re continuing to try to change the rhythm of that practice,” special teams coordinator J.B. Brown said on Wednesday. “He and Hudson [Hollenbeck] are competing in that practice every day and doing a good job. He’s practicing extremely well at a high level. We just need to translate it from State Street to Main Street now.
“And I think he’ll do that here soon.”
Doman hasn’t been all that consistent going back to the late stages of last season, so why should Michigan coaches be confident he will turn it around? Brown says that he trusts the player himself.
“Confidence is in him, really,” Brown said. “I think he works hard. He takes his craft very seriously. At the end of the day. We have full faith in him as a program. Everyone on the team has faith in him. The way he works and prepares, there’s no reason why he won’t.
“We just need to get his feet underneath him, his hips underneath them and be able to just get the ball out a little bit more. Been trying to change our practice to get some of that and change his rhythm up a little bit to do a little bit more of those things during practice. He had an extremely great day yesterday. Just looking forward to what he does this week.”
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But at a certain point, does it hurt the team continuing to trot him out there if he struggles? Hollenbeck would be the next man up, and Brown says the two compete each week as part of the tone set in practice.
“In our room, we try to make everybody compete every day…It doesn’t matter what position you are,” Brown said. “We want to compete, so that’s been ongoing since the start of the camp. Every day I think we’re trying to re-earn our spot.”
Pressed on if there could be a personnel change there, Brown said: “If Hudson puts better, then yeah.”
Michigan has no immediate plans to make a change at punter, so they will continue to work on the field and in the film room to get Doman’s big leg back on track. Even with his struggles the last few weeks, he is still 17th in the country in hangtime at 4.22 seconds on average, per Pro Football Focus.
“We have an individual camera on him every day during practice,” Brown said. So we watch as much film as you would [at any other position]. There are only so many punts you can watch at a time because there are only so many punts you can hit a day. We go through every one of those to try to find any flaw he has.
“We work on our mental game outside of that, physical attributes as well. [This year], his feet are a little bit different, so we’re working on getting those back into where they were but like I said, he’s been practicing extremely well. We’re just waiting for it to translate over to the stadium.”
