How is Brian Mason going to choose Notre Dame's starting kicker?

Notre Dame‘s special teams room has had quite the shakeup in recent months. That’s not to say the entire program has not, but the Irish currently have a new special teams coordinator looking for both a new starting punter and new starting kicker after the departures of Brian Polian, Jay Bramblett and Jonathan Doerer.

There are a number of decisions to be made. How will special teams coordinator Brain Mason make them, particularly when it comes to his starting kicker? The answer Mason gave is rather simple.

“I’m not trying to be a smarty pants, but it’s usually the easiest thing,” Mason said with a laugh. “Whoever makes the most field goals is going to kick the field goals in the game. (People ask) ‘Why’d you pick him to kick off?’ Well he kicked the ball farther than everybody else.”

Easy enough. Obviously, a multitude of things go into who makes the most field goals, though. How exactly is he preparing his group for that?

“We try to put them in situations to put pressure on them to see if they can handle that pressure, but sometimes you don’t know until game day,” Mason said.

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The two kickers currently working under said pressure — or whatever can be simulated in practice — are graduate transfer Blake Grupe and sophomore Josh Bryan. They alternated reps during Saturday’s practice, per Grupe.

“We’re both very competitive and kicking the ball very well right now,” Grupe said. “It’s all you can ask for, healthy competition.”

Mason is impressed with the two specialists so far. While he won’t signal who is in the “lead” for the starting role, he offered a bit of insight into what he’s seen.

“I think they’re very similar,” Mason said. “Grupe is kicking from 55 in pre-practice, and I trust him to be able to make from 55. I think he’s got more than good enough of a leg.

“Josh is extremely talented and does tend to get a little higher trajectory on his ball. If they’re neck-and-neck, we’re going to have to find those little things to separate them.”

Grupe, Bryan have varying experience

The two kickers bring vastly different backgrounds to Mason’s unit. Grupe was a four-year starter at Arkansas State from 2018-21. During that time, he became the Red Wolves’ all-time leader in both field goals made (64) and points (354).

In his first three years in the role, Grupe was 44 of 61 (72.1 percent) on field goal tries with a long of 47 yards. Last fall, he had his best season for Arkansas State, knocking through 20 of 25 field goal attempts (80.0 percent) with a long of 50 yards.

In his career, Grupe has converted 28 of 34 (82.4 percent) field goal attempts from 30-39 yards and 17 of 28 (60.7 percent) from 40-49 yards. He has made 162 of 169 (95.9 percent) extra point tries, with three of his misses coming during his redshirt freshman campaign in 2018. The Missouri native earned the starting job as a walk-on and was ultimately put on scholarship.

Bryan, on the other hand, is one for one on extra point tries in his career, making his collegiate debut against Georgia Tech last season. The former Valencia (Calif.) Sierra Canyon kicker was highly touted coming out of high school. According to On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies, Bryan was the nation’s No. 4 kicker in the 2021 class.

Despite the differing resumes, don’t assume the job is automatically Grupe’s, per Mason.

“This competition is going to go all the way until we play a game.”

And don’t assume you won’t see both kickers out there come opening weekend. Mason is open to the idea of giving both players starting duties.

“There could be two guys that end up kicking,” Mason said. “If one guy is way better from 50-plus and the other is way better from under 50, we can (change it up).”