I was more curious.
There's no debate things have to improve. I'm just not sure there's going to be a vast improvement outside of a statistical outlier like Noah Ruggles seems to have been, however.
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There's no debate things have to improve. I'm just not sure there's going to be a vast improvement outside of a statistical outlier like Noah Ruggles seems to have been, however.
I hear you but using that lens we probably have a very skewed distribution curve where we live in the skinny tails to the right of CFB at several positions. I don't think that's luck and I am of the opinion we shouldn't be hoping for luck on a kicker.
Why don't we have one of these mutants that's a legit threat anywhere past the 50? That should be the aspiration at least.
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gross
Through five games, that ship is still largely taking on water.
My favorite play yesterday had to be a punt from the OSU 45 all the way to the... Iowa 22. A 33-yard punt from midfield with no rush to disrupt the kick. Joe McGuire doesn't have enough punts to qualify for the CFB stats leaderboard but his average of 41.3 would slot about 58th right now.
The OSU punt team also got flagged for 12 men on the field (or maybe it was a false start) before a McGuire attempt.
Placekicker Connor Hawkins hasn't been bad for Ohio State, connecting on 5-of-7 field goal tries and both misses have from from 40+ yards but it doesn't feel like a coincidence the two misses came in OSU's two biggest games so far. His doink on a 40-yarder yesterday came with some pressure as the Buckeyes led 10-6 in the second quarter.
On punt return, an Iowa punt landed at the 17 and rolled to the 2 after the Hawkeyes purposely took a delay of game to give Boston Everitt more room to work with. Flawless execution.
I'm sure other bad stuff happened but I'm tired of thinking about it.
MAYBE NO ST COACH WAS THE BETTER MOVE
What do you even say about Ohio State special teams at this point? Hopes of the unit not being a raging dumpster fire for the umpteenth consecutive season were high after Day hired an actual special teams coach - with some prior success, no less - to come in and right that ship.Through five games, that ship is still largely taking on water.
My favorite play yesterday had to be a punt from the OSU 45 all the way to the... Iowa 22. A 33-yard punt from midfield with no rush to disrupt the kick. Joe McGuire doesn't have enough punts to qualify for the CFB stats leaderboard but his average of 41.3 would slot about 58th right now.
The OSU punt team also got flagged for 12 men on the field (or maybe it was a false start) before a McGuire attempt.
Placekicker Connor Hawkins hasn't been bad for Ohio State, connecting on 5-of-7 field goal tries and both misses have from from 40+ yards but it doesn't feel like a coincidence the two misses came in OSU's two biggest games so far. His doink on a 40-yarder yesterday came with some pressure as the Buckeyes led 10-6 in the second quarter.
On punt return, an Iowa punt landed at the 17 and rolled to the 2 after the Hawkeyes purposely took a delay of game to give Boston Everitt more room to work with. Flawless execution.
I'm sure other bad stuff happened but I'm tired of thinking about it.
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Jagdaddy
Head Coach
I really wish the press would dig into (or at least try to) and report on the approach to and process by which Ohio State coaches special teams, most specifically the kickers (what drills do they do, how is their practice time organized, etc ...). Discher actually has a pretty strong special teams resume, but he comes here and the results are still crappy. Maybe some sort of exorcism is needed.
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OregonBuckeye
Semper Fi Buckeyes
We do. Hawkins was 3-4 from 50 last year with a long of 54. Day doesn't seem to know how to develop kickers or hire people that do
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If he's already 3/4 from 50 before he was here, he's already developed.
Besides, Day is a QB guy, I wouldn't expect he would know how to "develop a kicker"....
No, this is a focus thing and everything is amplified by each miss. Even Nugent would be catching hell at this point if he missed one.
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ScriptOhio
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
"We've got to look into everything and try to figure out different ways in practice to apply more pressure. I think we've done that. We've looked into it. We've made changes. I think that everybody has to feel pressure — there's no question," Day said. "What we've done hasn't worked, so we've got to continue to figure out ways to get it better. I do think we have guys that can kick field goals, and they've shown that they can do that, but it's got to be consistent, and it's got to be in big spots. You ultimately fall to the level of your training, but we have to keep looking and uncover all stones to get this thing addressed, because we know it's going to come down to one of these kicks again that we've got to make."
Across the board, Ohio State needs better play from its special teams. And it needs to happen fast before the errors lead to more losses.
"When we play against certain teams, teams will look to try to steal a possession, and so there's times where we have to make sure that we're covering our bases," Day said. "But just overall, when we look at the consistency of kicking field goals, not good enough. When we look at our return yards, we need to be better across the board. When we have an opportunity to pooch the ball inside the 10-yard line, that has to get done. So it's a challenge to everybody in the program."
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@Ramzy on it again....
Special teams and corn: Two things Iowa fans can speak to from a place of authority. via
The Buckeyes once again have a national championship-caliber team led by a title-winning head coach, two NFL coordinators and a roster that's good enough to survive and advance all the way through a brutal schedule, culminating in a 16-game gauntlet.
And yet the headline atop this web site yesterday was Special Teams Must Improve, which has basically been the theme of this column since Jaxon Smith-Njigba was ruining Utah's otherwise sterling Rose Bowl performance. But it took on new relevance yesterday because Ryan Day said it into a microphone.
A younger and more inexperienced version of him once determined Parker Fleming merited a contract extension, despite his unit's performance looking exactly like it does now. An older and accomplished version of him decided Jayden Fielding was good enough heading into 2025, despite having borked numerous critical shots in actual games.
Fielding was making kicks in practice, which is generally how you make playability decisions. The problem was Fielding had missed so many kicks of consequence that it was his brand.
Imagine if Ryan Hamby had dropped six touchdown passes that would have beaten eventual national champions instead of just that one against Texas in 2005 - an impossibly bleak legacy. But while field goal kicking has snatched the most oxygen from our special teams anguish, this unit has done nothing well for years. That's their brand.
Day has called special teams mistakes unacceptable before, including while defending Fleming in 2023. Now he's saying, on the record, that the unit still hasn't improved after another coaching change. That matters because the problem has outlasted the guy who was supposed to be the problem. Keeping it in-house hasn't worked. Replacing the coordinator hasn't worked either.
Robby Discher was brought in this season to correct it, and if you're wondering what's different about this year's special teams compared to [waves hands in the direction of every unit since the pandemic] the answer is that Pam from The Office meme.
Like Discher's boss, we haven't seen a shred of difference or improvement. In some cases...it's somehow worse? Nearly halfway through the season, Ohio State has the best player in the sport along with the worst special teams SP+ score among the top 50 - and that's adjusted to not include any ankle weights from last year's pitiful unit, which means that this year's terrible ranking belongs entirely to the 2026 unit.
Special teams are the one area where even the talent-deficient opponents on the schedule can find breathing room. Under Fleming, it was a weekly clinic for forfeited hidden yards, creating longer fields for the Buckeyes and shorter ones for whomever they were playing.
OHIO STATE CONTENDS FOR NATIONAL TITLES EVERY SEASON WHILE HAVING ONE OF THE MOST INEFFECTIVE SPECIAL TEAMS UNITS IN THE FBS.
If you don't care about longer fields, since Ohio State currently has the best passing offense in the country and most prolific passing offense in program history operating under Day, think about what a shorter field would do for, say, field goal kicking. Would five more yards make a difference?
Would Fielding have made a 22-yarder against Indiana in the B1G title game last year, instead of the 27-yarder he missed badly? I don't know? Shanks shank from all distances ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It hasn't just been the infamous missed field goals and general incompetence - Fleming introduced Ohio State special teams to chronic illegal formations - it's been everything about that unit. You may have memory-holed Main Character plays that removed elite passer CJ Stroud from the field and ignored Biletnikoff winner Marvin Harrison Jr. in favor of a clever fake concept where a long snapper snaps the ball to a slow walk-on tight end.
They botched it against Michigan in 2022, then for good measure - tried it again against Georgia - which Kirby Smart sniffed out, but he didn't need to because Ohio State had 12 guys on the field for it. Two playoff-caliber games, two opportunities for the clever concept to implode on them. They took both.
On Saturday against Iowa, it was more of The Usual. The Buckeyes didn't have enough guys on the field for a punt, which cost them a penalty and yardage. Connor Hawkins missed a 40-yard field goal, which has been an extra point for Iowa kickers going back to the days when Nile Kinnick was beating Notre Dame all by himself.
After Iowa's sole touchdown, the Hawkeyes decided to go for two and were stopped by the Ohio State defense. But they got another crack at it because the Buckeyes had 12 men on the field. Isn't that on the defense? No, it's on the special teamer who instinctively ran onto the field for the PAT and caused that penalty.
Joe McGuire - who believe it or not has a monster leg and can absolutely bomb a punt into orbit while barefoot - is netting a grotesque 38 yards on his punts this season. That captures both the unit's inability to flip the field and its struggles to pin opponents deep. On Saturday he punted from the Iowa 45 - with the Hawkeyes in punt safe and applying no pressure on him whatsoever - and they fair-caught it at the 22.
Unless you're reading this column from a wheelchair or a bassinet, your leg can probably do that. Per PFF (yeah, I know) McGuire is 117th in yards per punt, 114th in net average, 135th in longest punt, 87th in hang time and 122nd overall - out of a pool of 151 punters. He doesn't have to be the Jeremiah Smith of punters. But he's not even average.
It is exhausting to have to keep talking about it - the only progress this year has been Day's explicit admission yesterday that it hasn't improved. On a grading scale, it's a D+ because blasting kickoffs out of the end zone in an era where a fair catch inside the 25 brings the ball out to the 25 is the only strategy off the tee. They've erased any drama from that sequence entirely.
There's only been a single afternoon where the Buckeyes lost and you couldn't take a giant Sharpie and circle SPECIAL TEAMS COMPETENCE 87 times while sobbing since the Alabama CFP title game - the least-watched title game ever despite featuring Alabama and Ohio State - right up until the Georgia-TCU snoozer. Which would have been Ohio State-TCU if not for...you know.
Special teams cost Ohio State nothing in that Alabama title game - COVID absences kept a number of starters from participating, ironically including two kickers. Hard to be the problem when you're not allowed in the stadium.
So which afternoon was the exception? That took place in 2021 in Ann Arbor, the dawn of the Three-Cheat. OSU special teams were blameless that day. We're five years removed from an innocent verdict in a big game.
As with Fielding, Day decided McGuire was good enough heading into this season despite all of the flaccid punts from 2025. Hiring Discher, who is firmly qualified for the job, acknowledged the problem. But nothing appears to be improving.
One idea is to bring back the culture of the room Drue Chrisman left behind after the 2020 season, where special teamers were too goofy, silly and carefree to have The Moment absolutely consume them all the way into the bowels of Shanktown.
Perhaps Pressure is a Privilege isn't the right psychology for the guys on the roster who aren't trying to do anything but kick a ball properly. It's something to consider, because nothing has worked. Still, there are glimmers of positivity in this mess, specifically about having Discher on the staff.
He has experience coaching tight ends at multiple programs, with success. That's interesting!
OPENER | THE SOFT KICKOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS
Special teams and corn: Two things Iowa fans can speak to from a place of authority. via
The Buckeyes once again have a national championship-caliber team led by a title-winning head coach, two NFL coordinators and a roster that's good enough to survive and advance all the way through a brutal schedule, culminating in a 16-game gauntlet.
And yet the headline atop this web site yesterday was Special Teams Must Improve, which has basically been the theme of this column since Jaxon Smith-Njigba was ruining Utah's otherwise sterling Rose Bowl performance. But it took on new relevance yesterday because Ryan Day said it into a microphone.
A younger and more inexperienced version of him once determined Parker Fleming merited a contract extension, despite his unit's performance looking exactly like it does now. An older and accomplished version of him decided Jayden Fielding was good enough heading into 2025, despite having borked numerous critical shots in actual games.
Fielding was making kicks in practice, which is generally how you make playability decisions. The problem was Fielding had missed so many kicks of consequence that it was his brand.
Imagine if Ryan Hamby had dropped six touchdown passes that would have beaten eventual national champions instead of just that one against Texas in 2005 - an impossibly bleak legacy. But while field goal kicking has snatched the most oxygen from our special teams anguish, this unit has done nothing well for years. That's their brand.
Day has called special teams mistakes unacceptable before, including while defending Fleming in 2023. Now he's saying, on the record, that the unit still hasn't improved after another coaching change. That matters because the problem has outlasted the guy who was supposed to be the problem. Keeping it in-house hasn't worked. Replacing the coordinator hasn't worked either.
Robby Discher was brought in this season to correct it, and if you're wondering what's different about this year's special teams compared to [waves hands in the direction of every unit since the pandemic] the answer is that Pam from The Office meme.
Like Discher's boss, we haven't seen a shred of difference or improvement. In some cases...it's somehow worse? Nearly halfway through the season, Ohio State has the best player in the sport along with the worst special teams SP+ score among the top 50 - and that's adjusted to not include any ankle weights from last year's pitiful unit, which means that this year's terrible ranking belongs entirely to the 2026 unit.
Special teams are the one area where even the talent-deficient opponents on the schedule can find breathing room. Under Fleming, it was a weekly clinic for forfeited hidden yards, creating longer fields for the Buckeyes and shorter ones for whomever they were playing.
OHIO STATE CONTENDS FOR NATIONAL TITLES EVERY SEASON WHILE HAVING ONE OF THE MOST INEFFECTIVE SPECIAL TEAMS UNITS IN THE FBS.
If you don't care about longer fields, since Ohio State currently has the best passing offense in the country and most prolific passing offense in program history operating under Day, think about what a shorter field would do for, say, field goal kicking. Would five more yards make a difference?
Would Fielding have made a 22-yarder against Indiana in the B1G title game last year, instead of the 27-yarder he missed badly? I don't know? Shanks shank from all distances ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It hasn't just been the infamous missed field goals and general incompetence - Fleming introduced Ohio State special teams to chronic illegal formations - it's been everything about that unit. You may have memory-holed Main Character plays that removed elite passer CJ Stroud from the field and ignored Biletnikoff winner Marvin Harrison Jr. in favor of a clever fake concept where a long snapper snaps the ball to a slow walk-on tight end.
They botched it against Michigan in 2022, then for good measure - tried it again against Georgia - which Kirby Smart sniffed out, but he didn't need to because Ohio State had 12 guys on the field for it. Two playoff-caliber games, two opportunities for the clever concept to implode on them. They took both.
On Saturday against Iowa, it was more of The Usual. The Buckeyes didn't have enough guys on the field for a punt, which cost them a penalty and yardage. Connor Hawkins missed a 40-yard field goal, which has been an extra point for Iowa kickers going back to the days when Nile Kinnick was beating Notre Dame all by himself.
After Iowa's sole touchdown, the Hawkeyes decided to go for two and were stopped by the Ohio State defense. But they got another crack at it because the Buckeyes had 12 men on the field. Isn't that on the defense? No, it's on the special teamer who instinctively ran onto the field for the PAT and caused that penalty.
Joe McGuire - who believe it or not has a monster leg and can absolutely bomb a punt into orbit while barefoot - is netting a grotesque 38 yards on his punts this season. That captures both the unit's inability to flip the field and its struggles to pin opponents deep. On Saturday he punted from the Iowa 45 - with the Hawkeyes in punt safe and applying no pressure on him whatsoever - and they fair-caught it at the 22.
Unless you're reading this column from a wheelchair or a bassinet, your leg can probably do that. Per PFF (yeah, I know) McGuire is 117th in yards per punt, 114th in net average, 135th in longest punt, 87th in hang time and 122nd overall - out of a pool of 151 punters. He doesn't have to be the Jeremiah Smith of punters. But he's not even average.
It is exhausting to have to keep talking about it - the only progress this year has been Day's explicit admission yesterday that it hasn't improved. On a grading scale, it's a D+ because blasting kickoffs out of the end zone in an era where a fair catch inside the 25 brings the ball out to the 25 is the only strategy off the tee. They've erased any drama from that sequence entirely.
There's only been a single afternoon where the Buckeyes lost and you couldn't take a giant Sharpie and circle SPECIAL TEAMS COMPETENCE 87 times while sobbing since the Alabama CFP title game - the least-watched title game ever despite featuring Alabama and Ohio State - right up until the Georgia-TCU snoozer. Which would have been Ohio State-TCU if not for...you know.
Special teams cost Ohio State nothing in that Alabama title game - COVID absences kept a number of starters from participating, ironically including two kickers. Hard to be the problem when you're not allowed in the stadium.
So which afternoon was the exception? That took place in 2021 in Ann Arbor, the dawn of the Three-Cheat. OSU special teams were blameless that day. We're five years removed from an innocent verdict in a big game.
As with Fielding, Day decided McGuire was good enough heading into this season despite all of the flaccid punts from 2025. Hiring Discher, who is firmly qualified for the job, acknowledged the problem. But nothing appears to be improving.
One idea is to bring back the culture of the room Drue Chrisman left behind after the 2020 season, where special teamers were too goofy, silly and carefree to have The Moment absolutely consume them all the way into the bowels of Shanktown.
Perhaps Pressure is a Privilege isn't the right psychology for the guys on the roster who aren't trying to do anything but kick a ball properly. It's something to consider, because nothing has worked. Still, there are glimmers of positivity in this mess, specifically about having Discher on the staff.
He has experience coaching tight ends at multiple programs, with success. That's interesting!
Upvote
0
