Thinking about how kickers can kick the ball through the opposing teams goal during kickoffs, I wonder why the pressure isn’t put on the long-snapper to get more speed/range and allow a lower kicking angle to avoid blocks while increasing range. I’m thinking this has been optimized, but the statement above w/ the holder moving from 7 to 8 yards back got me thinking, Why not 15 yards back?
From experience (Long long ago), I can tell you that it is much easier to be accurate with the snap at 7 yards than at 15. And for a field goal attempt, everything has to work right, the snap, the hold, and the kick. At 15 yards(punting snap) the accuracy for the snap is just not there.
As for the 53 vs 58 yards for the kicker, those extra 5 yards makes a huge difference. If you notice on field goals, even short ones the kicker uses about the same effort. So at 50 yards, the kick is comfortable for the that kicker, but any more than that, he will start straining to make the distance, and that can affect accuracy.
So for the OP, i would guess that the coach knew the kickers limits, and with a full quarter to go did not want to give the other team the ball at the 40 yard line, vs the 20 or lower.
Exactly this. The snap/placement length for a placekick does seem to be optimized for 7 or 8 yards. It’s a compromise distance which puts the kick placement far enough behind the line of scrimmage that the kick is unlikely to be blocked, while not robbing the kicker of too much range.
The long snapper for a field goal is usually the same guy for a punt, but the punter will often have to take a step to the side, bend over, or jump up a bit, to field that longer snap (the longer the snap, the more likely that it will be off-target); conversely, the holder for a place kick is on one knee, and is very limited in how much range he is able to move to field the snap, and get it on the ground.
In addition, the kicker will start his approach the moment that the ball when the ball is snapped (i.e., before it’s actually in the holder’s hands); an off-target snap will often cause the holder to have to take more time to get the ball placed, and that can disrupt the kicker’s approach and rhythm, making a bad kick much more likely.
Also,
First of all, this is pretty uncommon. In the NFL, many kickers can, indeed, regularly put the kickoff into the end zone (65 yards away from where they kick the ball), but to split the uprights on a kickoff, that means not only kicking the ball 75+ yards, but having it still be at least 10 feet above the ground when it reaches the end line, as well as being on target for the goal posts. On kickoffs, kickers are looking for distance and height, but not the level of accuracy needed for a field goal.
Also, on a kickoff, the kicker is able to take a much longer approach to the ball (generating speed and distance), the ball is placed on a tee (one inch above the ground in the NFL and NCAA) – that little bit of height does make a difference, and he’s not facing a rush or particular time pressure to kick the ball.
Oh, wow, that’s weird. I went to St. Andrews back in the early '90s (although it was then St. Andrews Presbyterian College) and we were way too small to have a football team, or even be in the same conference as Presbyterian for any sport.
But that result’s about what I would expect; the only sport we were successful in (which was consequently the most popular one on campus) was women’s volleyball.
Very much a “big fish, small pond” situation.
There are several other good football high schools in the state, but few, if any, have the financial resources of PA. He could have been a conventional coach and still had a similar winning % by virtue of having the best players.
It’s not exactly shocking that the same level of success could not be achieved when the situation was reversed at Presbyterian.
He also walked away from an assistant job with the Patriots after 1 week. It’s a legitimate question as to whether he was winning because of his unorthodox tactics (rather than simply having better players) or despite of them and also whether or not he’s really interested in trying to prove himself again at the college or professional level (where his performance can’t even be described as ‘mixed’ rather than just plain bad).
That’s even worse than I thought. I had thought that the defending team would get it at the line-of-scrimmage (which is presumably usually still a lot better field position than if the offensive team punted). But, I see from a google search that you are correct.
It used to be that way, but the NFL changed the rules in 1994, in an effort to discourage long field goals and encourage more touchdown attempts.
The thing about high school punters is that they stink.
The value of a punt is directly related to how far the punt goes, how many yards you can expect the field position to change as a result of a punt. In the NFL, this is around 40-45 yards. In high school, that may be 25-30 yards. High school punts just don’t provide the same win/loss benefit as an NFL punt.
Excellent point. And, in the NFL, blocked punts are rare – last season, the average team had a punt blocked 0.4 times, and only two teams suffered more than one blocked punt.
A lot of things can go pear-shaped on a punt play, if your players aren’t skilled: a bad snap, a blocked punt, a shank that goes out of bounds for minimal distance, and a long return by the receiving team. In the NFL (or even in college), all of those are still possible, but probably a lot less likely, than in high school.
The other thing is it easier to kick a long field goal in practice - you don’t have 6-8 large gentlemen bearing down on you, there is no pressure if you miss, and you can kick when you are ready as opposed to when the ball is snapped.
The Chief’s Harrison Butker apparently pretty regularly kicks 75 yard field goals in practice and warm ups, but so far they haven’t had him try it in a game.
As to getting a ‘field goal’ on kick off, Justin Reid (Chief’s safety and backup kicker) did it against the Cardinal’s two weeks ago when Butker hurt his ankle. Of course, on a kick off, the kicker has total control of placement and timing, so it is very much like warmups.
Kickers can nail a kick plenty far at low trajectory angles even ending up high enough to get over the cross bar. Problem is during a game kicking at a low trajectory angle means going right into the hands of the defense jumping up to deflect the kick.
They are too risk averse if you are assuming their objective is to win football games.
Not so much if you think their objective is keeping their jobs.
I’m not sure what the stats are for college, but I remember reading a statistical analysis of NFL games that said going for it on 4th down was nearly always the best bet. Here’s an article on it.
I would guess that @cincinnatus’ school’s coach was figuring that in the 3rd quarter, there was no reason to give the other team the ball with nearly a quarter to go, if they were only down by 2 points. He probably viewed it as more of a risk to do that, than to punt and (hopefully) back them up on their 5 yard line or something like that, considering the time remaining.
That’s the important thing here- down, distance and time were such that it didn’t seem like a good thing to kick a field goal right there and then. I bet if it had been 5 minutes left in the 4th quarter, he sure would have kicked. But he likely thought he could stop the other team once they’re backed up so far after the punt, get the ball back and score a touchdown or kick a field goal from closer in, rather than take a risky field goal and potentially give them great field position on their own 41.
Just a bit of clarification: as several of us noted upthread, in the NCAA (and the NFL), after a missed field goal, the ball is placed at the spot of the kick, and not at the line of scrimmage from that play. So, in the OP’s example, the ball would wind up being placed at about the 48 or 49 yard line (depending on if the team set up their holder 7 or 8 yards behind the line of scrimmage).
I had forgotten about that. It doesn’t really change much, except that the 48 is even worse than the 41 for terms of field position after a failed kick.
Exactly, and it makes trying a long field goal (with a relatively low probability of success) even less attractive.
OK, then, that just means the team owners, or whoever it is who would be firing the coaches, are too risk-averse.
Owner’s might not be optimizing for winning either. They could be optimizing for revenue generation or something. Maybe the fans are more forgiving of a conventional loss than one played according to optimal play.
“Then the fans are too risk averse!”
Maybe the fans optimizing pleasure, and the confusion brought on by new strategy offsets the increased pleasure from winning more often.
On kickoff the ball is on a tee. On placekicks, the ball is on the grass. That difference is huge.
They’re also not aiming to do that either; it just happens occasionally. I would guess the percentage is pretty low.