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Will Penn State make a change at placekicker moving forward?

Greg Pickelby:Greg Pickel•09/28/24•

GregPickel

Penn State's Sander Sahaydak misses on a 40-yard field goal in the second quarter of a Big Ten football game against Illinois, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024, in State College, Pa. (Dan Rainville/Hanover Sun)
Penn State's Sander Sahaydak. Dan Rainville/Hanover Sun)

STATE COLLEGE — Penn State held a three-man competition this offseason for the right to replace Alex Felkins as the team’s placekicker. It brought Chase Meyer in from Tulsa to battle redshirt freshman Ryan Barker and one-time incumbent Sander Sahaydak for the job. Sahaydak, a redshirt junior from Bethlehem, Pa., ultimately won back the job he lost to Felkins after just two games last season. He may be on the verge of losing it again, however.

The No. 9 Nittany Lions were fortunate that they did not need the six points Sahaydak left on the field in a 21-7 win over No. 19 Illinois. His first miss from 40 yards sailed wide left in the first half. His second, from the same distance, went wide right in the second half. The program veteran did make two extra point but gave way to Barker for the final extra point of the night. Will that be the plan for placement kicks moving forward? It feels likely. But, it’s too early to say for sure.

“As you can imagine, I’m not going to get into that right now,” head coach James Franklin said. “I love Sander Sahaydak. He’s been awesome. And we just won a game, and he should be celebrating this win like everybody else. But, ultimately, we’ll have a competition, and all these things will factor into some decisions that we’re going to have to make moving forward. But I want Sander to celebrate this win like everybody else, because he’s put a ton into this. He’s a great kid, he’s a great representative of Penn State, everything that we’re about. And I love the fact that we played complementary football. Our offense and defense had Sander’s back.”

Who could Penn State replace him with?

Barker is a second-year Nittany lion from Landenberg, Pa., who made his collegiate debut when his fourth quarter extra point sailed through the uprights. Despite it being his first game kick, he was praised a lot last year and this year for his work in practice. Meyer, then, was banged up during the spring but is now healthy. At Tulsa, the Los Angeles, Calif., native made 17 of 20 field goal tries, a stark contrast to Sahaydak’s 3-for-9 mark over four seasons in State College.

“We chart every kick,” special teams coordinator Justin Lustig said earlier this month. “The percentage points [between the three] were very, very close. We’re talking like three to five percentage points between the top guy and the bottom guy. That’s a good thing for us. We’ve got depth, got three guys that can really do it at a high level, in my opinion. And then everything that we do during practice to prepare is to try to simulate pressure situations. So we did that quite a bit during camp. At the end of practice, we’ll simulate crowd noise and maybe make the guys do a couple of push-ups if the kickers missed the field goals, and just different ways to create a lot of pressure.

“So you know, when you look at those, you look at all the regular field goals that we made in practice, and you look at those pressure competition field goals, and Sander was in the lead in all of those phases. So that’s kind of how we made the decision. Felt like he took steps there and was ready to go.”

That is now being called into question, though. And how Penn State proceeded from here will have a major impact on the remainder of its season.

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