How Notre Dame walk-on kicker Zac Yoakam is hoping to pull another surprise

Zac Yoakam learned he would be kicking off in front of 106,000 people with about 30 minutes’ notice, an assignment that arrived with zero guarantees beyond the three opportunities he ended up receiving that day. Yoakam, a freshman walk-on last fall, was thrust into kickoff duties for Notre Dame’s opener at Ohio State when original No. 1 kickoff man Bryce McFerson aggravated a groin injury during pregame warmups.

An anonymous summer roster addition had nothing to hide behind anymore. Not that he wanted to disappear. A small possibility during game week became a reality the Upper Arlington, Ohio native leaned into.

“I was ready for it,” Yoakam said. “I mean, it’s Columbus. I’m from Columbus. It was awesome.”

A job handed to him by chance became more than a neat one-week story.

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Yoakam booted two touchbacks on his three kickoffs against Ohio State. McFerson’s injury needed a few weeks to heal, and by the time he returned to full health, Yoakam was too effective to usurp. He ended the year ranked 39th nationally in touchback rate (61.64 percent), the second-highest percentage for any Notre Dame player since kickoffs moved to the 35-yard line in 2012. A good ol’ Wally Pipp’ing. His post-touchback celebration of running all the way to the end zone (but only if he’s at 100 percent touchbacks that game) became hard to miss.

Yoakam, by his own admission, didn’t see any of it coming. Total surprise. Now, though, he’s hoping to pull another one in an upcoming battle he has anticipated for months.

Notre Dame has elevated Yoakam to the No. 1 placekicker job this spring now that Blake Grupe has moved on, but mainly by default. The Irish added South Florida grad transfer kicker Spencer Shrader in December, but he doesn’t arrive until June. No matter how Yoakam does this spring, it won’t lock him into anything.

The kicking picture is incomplete without Shrader. He’s not only the likely field goal kicker. He could claim the kickoff job too. His 80.65 touchback rate was fourth nationally last year. The race is not decided, but there’s a clear favorite.

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That’s OK by Yoakam, who’s unfazed by the challenge and understands he’s entitled to nothing.

“There’s always going to be competition,” Yoakam said. “There’s a freshman (walk-on Marcello Diomede) coming in as well. No matter what, you’re going to have competition. At the end of the day, you have to come up and show yourself.”

Yoakam has met the moment before. He did again in a recent spring practice, making each of his nine attempts, with a long of 43 yards. The pressure of kicking field goals feels natural after spending 12 fall Saturdays in a fishbowl last year. It’s real, even in practice. And Yoakam didn’t get much kicking time in team practice periods last year.

“Playing in a game is really important,” Yoakam said. “If you don’t play in a game, you don’t understand what 80,000 fans are like. Once you understand what 80,000 fans are like, everything else becomes a little easier.”

Kicking looked easy for him in that practice. Special teams coordinator Marty Biagi has already made a difference just a month after his hiring. Yoakam had two of Biagi’s points of emphasis written on his left hand: land upright and finish straight.

“Coach Biagi is trying to put in ideas before you kick,” Yoakam said. “You know how there’s pre-snap mentality? That’s pretty much one of the things before I get in my stance, I need to remember what I need to do, which is land upright and finish straight.

“When you’re kicking, you need to have a mental thing that keeps you locked in. You don’t want to be focusing on the fans or focusing on your holder. You want to be focusing on what you need to do, and that’s make the kick.”

The arrival of Biagi – a former kicker and punter at Marshall – should help Notre Dame’s specialists. Biagi considers himself an “auto tune-up” for kickers and punters. He’s not there to reinvent them, but to help them reach optimal function. For Yoakam, that was a fundamentals fix-up.

“I wasn’t finishing toward my target destination,” Yoakam said. “I want to finish straight toward the field goal. I was finishing to the left a little bit, to the right a little bit, all over the place. Consistency is what he’s looking for.”

And what will boost his chances of another surprise.