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Special Teams - Substantive discussion

Whocares said:
Hope Mora can take on the kickoff duty next season. He looked to have a big leg.
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I’ve mentioned on several threads that I’ve watched Mora put kick offs into and thru the end zone during his HS games.
He has the leg. Now that we’re within the 4 game redshirt window, I’m surprised we’re not seeing him do kickoffs.
Maybe next week at Cuse.
 
We had a different kicker on at least the 2nd touchdown bc I noticed some little dude (#89 I think) got juked out of his jock and had zero chance of actually making a tackle
 
CONeill said:
Yeah so here's the thing that I think is the biggest difference between firing Sawvel and Lineberg: Last Clawson fired Sawvel after 4 games because he thought the season could be saved (to an extent) by making that change. Not sure what a knee-jerk reaction with two games left would solve. Guessing the last two games will be a patchwork of sky kicks and such.

And then this: Lineberg oversees special teams, but he's not the hands-on coach for every unit. Every unit has a specific assistant coach that runs it, and Lineberg oversees that. When I joked with Boogie about being on kick cover, he said "if Coach Tooch needs me to do that, I'll do it" -- so I took that to mean Santucci coaches kick cover. Last year when Dortch returned the punts for TDs against Towson, he said one of the plays came from Crawford. I think Clawson is actually the "hands-on" coach for PAT/field goal, based on how intently he coaches during those segments.
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Thank you for the great analysis. That was exactly what I was wondering. Not necessarily trying to crush Santucci (unless his fault), but if Lineberg is not responsible for kick coverage and/or punt return, would prefer our fan base not be calling for his head. Also agree firing anyone now doesn’t make sense, which is why I framed this as a 2020 question. Scheme or some coach has to be changed before spring ball.

While finding a kicker who can blast it out of the end zone would be great, it still would not solve the directionless punt return scheme.
 
SC DEAC said:
We had a different kicker on at least the 2nd touchdown bc I noticed some little dude (#89 I think) got juked out of his jock and had zero chance of actually making a tackle
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Both TD returns Murphy was kicking off.
 
SC DEAC said:
We had a different kicker on at least the 2nd touchdown bc I noticed some little dude (#89 I think) got juked out of his jock and had zero chance of actually making a tackle
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That was AT Perry, a skinny 6’5” WR. He and my hero Donavon Greene were on kickoff coverage. Greene is fast and a great athlete but he didn’t have the reputation as a hitter in high school. I seriously doubt AT Perry is much of a hitter. I believe Delaney was injured for the Duke game, so that took away one of our speed guys and best tacklers.
 
Dekin said:
I’ve mentioned on several threads that I’ve watched Mora put kick offs into and thru the end zone during his HS games.
He has the leg. Now that we’re within the 4 game redshirt window, I’m surprised we’re not seeing him do kickoffs.
Maybe next week at Cuse.
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I noticed Ivan on the sidelines last night at the game and he was not even dressed. I just checked the two-deep depth chart on the Wake football website and he is not listed at any position, so I seriously doubt he will be kicking at Syracuse.

Conor was at most of the Fall Camp practices and can probably comment further on what he saw regarding Ivan.
 
For me, the first KO return was on the players. The second was on the coaches. I believe we kicked away from the guy that returned it for the TD on the 2 KOs right after the first TD return; a guy bobbled the first one and then a guy fair caught one. Then for some inexplicable reason, we started kicking it "deep" to the TD guy again. A couple of decent returns and then boom, another TD. For the life of me, I can't understand why we started kicking deep again, especially given the debacle that the Louisville game was. So yeah, our KO coverage is not good; however, there are ways to minimize that. Yeah, maybe you give the team the ball at the 30-35, but that sure as heck is better than giving up free TDs.
 
I wonder what the overall touchback rate is in college football now, and then compare that to ours. We must lead the country in % of kicks that get returned.

And echo earlier comments - why isn’t Mora kicking if he has a BSD leg? There isn’t anyone on campus that can kick it thru the end zone?
 
Most kicks aren't through the endzone. They get to the endzone and teams don't return them.
 
Henry Chinaski said:
I wonder what the overall touchback rate is in college football now, and then compare that to ours. We must lead the country in % of kicks that get returned.

And echo earlier comments - why isn’t Mora kicking if he has a BSD leg? There isn’t anyone on campus that can kick it thru the end zone?
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Well, according to NCAA.com, Wake is 126th in the country in Kick Return Defense (out of 130). We have 32 KO returns against us, to only 16 touchbacks and the three TDs. The 3 TDs is the worst in the country. Not sure about the average, but there are many teams with more touchbacks than returns. Tennessee has 41 touchbacks and 7 returns. Clemson has 60 touchbacks.
 
Henry Chinaski said:
I wonder what the overall touchback rate is in college football now, and then compare that to ours. We must lead the country in % of kicks that get returned.

And echo earlier comments - why isn’t Mora kicking if he has a BSD leg? There isn’t anyone on campus that can kick it thru the end zone?
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I found a website at https://www.footballdb.com/college-football/stats/stats.html?yr=2019&conf=&mode=O&sort=kotbwith the kickoff stats for this season. I pulled the information into a spreadsheet to calculate the touch back percentage and the return percentage. On average, 54% of kicks are touch backs, so very few kickers are kicking it "thru the end zone" on a regular basis. Roughly half the kickers have a percentage higher than this average. Additionally, the average number of kickoffs that are returned is 33%.
 
krukow said:
Game threads are for hot takes. But every once in awhile a topic in there is clearly a correct take and should be hashed out further. Let’s discuss special teams and what that should look like in 2020.

- Don’t want to rush the punter because you trust the O and Clawson has stated his concern about a roughing penalty? Sure, then set up a scheme to block for the returner. In the worst alternative, but still better than what we currently do, just fair catch it every time. If Hinton doesn’t sit down there, 7 dirty Duke players had open season on him.
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While Wake is not great at punts return at all, the play you referenced was a unique circumstance. The regular defense stayed on the field for that punt, with only Hinton swapping in for a DB. The defense then played a "punt fake" defense, where they were guarding against a possible fake given Duke's field position & short yardage to a first down. It meant that WF really didn't rush the punter, nor did any players drop back to block for Hinton as they each had specific short coverage duties against a possible run or pass.

A more appropriate play for illustrating how lackluster punt returns are for WF occurred later where WF set up a normal punt return play and Hinton was still going against like 5 unblocked Duke players.
 
wfu22fan said:
That was AT Perry, a skinny 6’5” WR. He and my hero Donavon Greene were on kickoff coverage. Greene is fast and a great athlete but he didn’t have the reputation as a hitter in high school. I seriously doubt AT Perry is much of a hitter. I believe Delaney was injured for the Duke game, so that took away one of our speed guys and best tacklers.
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To win our final two games of the season and stop embarrassing ourselves with 6th grade kick coverage...perhaps...instead of relying on the 4th string running back, Delaney, and no experience wide receivers to make tackles on kickoffs, put the starters out there.

Do these guys play on kickoffs or, are AT Perry, rookie Greene, 4th string Delaney that much better:

Bassey
Henderson
Greer
Coby Davis
Ja Sir
Jacquez Williams
Chase Jones
Steve Claude
*healthy Delaney
A warm body, hell McCollum? He is fast and he can tackle.

Mora or a walk on from the soccer team.

Pooch, kick it out of bounds, squib, whatever. Can Maggio punt it?

Just don’t do the same damn thing we just did against pitiful, Cutcliffe is an ass because he knows Manning, Duke.
 
I find it hard to believe that it is coincidence that all of the run backs we have had this have been from essentially the same location on the field and were runs straight up the middle of the field. Leads me to believe there is something clearly wrong with the type of coverage and the position of our players as they run down the field. It has to be more coaching than execution.
 
Complacent Deac said:
To win our final two games of the season and stop embarrassing ourselves with 6th grade kick coverage...perhaps...instead of relying on the 4th string running back, Delaney, and no experience wide receivers to make tackles on kickoffs, put the starters out there.

Do these guys play on kickoffs or, are AT Perry, rookie Greene, 4th string Delaney that much better:

Bassey
Henderson
Greer
Coby Davis
Ja Sir
Jacquez Williams
Chase Jones
Steve Claude
*healthy Delaney
A warm body, hell McCollum? He is fast and he can tackle.

Mora or a walk on from the soccer team.

Pooch, kick it out of bounds, squib, whatever. Can Maggio punt it?

Just don’t do the same damn thing we just did against pitiful, Cutcliffe is an ass because he knows Manning, Duke.
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Delaney has been an awesome ST coverage guy so not sure why you are picking on him. We’ve definitely had a lot of the guys you mentioned out there. Agree that it seems weird on the surface to have someone like Perry out there, but who knows what he’s shown at practice.
 
ChaosDeac said:
While Wake is not great at punts return at all, the play you referenced was a unique circumstance. The regular defense stayed on the field for that punt, with only Hinton swapping in for a DB. The defense then played a "punt fake" defense, where they were guarding against a possible fake given Duke's field position & short yardage to a first down. It meant that WF really didn't rush the punter, nor did any players drop back to block for Hinton as they each had specific short coverage duties against a possible run or pass.

A more appropriate play for illustrating how lackluster punt returns are for WF occurred later where WF set up a normal punt return play and Hinton was still going against like 5 unblocked Duke players.
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You are correct on that play. Punt safe was on for the fake and no return was expected. My point was to illustrate coaching your best healthy, offensive player to fair catch the ball in that situation (and others when a true PR play is not on). We can’t expect our former scramble drill QB to not try to make a special play on Senior night (he made a lot of them), so coaches need to be clear with the team when “punt safe” is on, we are fair catching the ball.

My other point about not having a clear punt return blocking plan (watched the replay of the game, and it actually looks like they are coached to release the block 15-20 yards down field), that we should almost always fair catch it. Your example is a perfect one, as Hinton was wrapped up by 3 guys around the 15 yard line. Much more likely he gets that stripped, than he breaks out for another 20 yards.
 
IAppreciateIt said:
Delaney has been an awesome ST coverage guy so not sure why you are picking on him. We’ve definitely had a lot of the guys you mentioned out there. Agree that it seems weird on the surface to have someone like Perry out there, but who knows what he’s shown at practice.
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Delaney has been awesome. Did not intend to dump on him, but just want to see the Deacs do SOMETHING to mix it up, since we could absolutely go 10-3 this year, if we clean up this kickoff mess fast.
 
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