Kicking game a concern as slate toughens
Blocked FGs, short kickoffs can kill a season
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Kicker Jake Pinegar’s fifth and final year in Happy Valley hasn’t started off quite the way he would have intended.
Back as No. 11 Penn State’s starting kicker — a position he held for the better part of three seasons before giving way to current Baltimore Ravens punter Jordan Stout in 2021 — Pinegar is 3 for 5, with his misses being wide right from 42 yards and 38 yards.
He’s also missed two extra points, one of which was blocked and the other missing wide left.
“At the end of the day, me kicking is making or missing field goals,” Pinegar said last week. “It comes down to me. Obviously, when you get a lot of push inside or on the outside, it can affect it a little bit.
“At the end of the day, when that stuff’s brought up, it’s about me making the kick.”
Following the Nittany Lions’ 33-14 win Saturday against Central Michigan, coach James Franklin expressed his frustration over one of Pinegar’s point-after attempts being blocked.
“We ran the same protection the last couple of years, and we’ve had no issues with it,” Franklin said.
But under first-year special teams coordinator Stacy Collins, who replaced Joe Lorig, such issues have manifested. Place-kicking problems haven’t impacted the Nittany Lions’ ability to win games yet, but they’re certainly something Collins would like to address sooner rather than later.
“We’ve got to get that cleaned up. You cannot have a kick blocked,” Collins said. “We’ve got to be clean with our set fundamentals and techniques. There are certain things we need to do from an alignment standpoint that will work to try to help those guys out from an interior standpoint.”
While Pinegar’s had an up-and-down season with his field goal attempts, where he saw more success was on kickoffs against Central Michigan. Of his four kickoffs, three went for touchbacks and one was a fair catch.
Pinegar, who has been known throughout his Penn State career for his accuracy on shorter-range field goals — 83% from 39 yards and in — rather than on longer ones — 50% from 40 yards and out — drew praise from Collins for his overall leg strength.
“I was very happy with Jake,” Collins said. “He was able to come into that game, and to see him go 4 for 4 between touchbacks and fair catches, he kicked the ball off well.”
Of course, what prompted Pinegar’s involvement with the kickoff game were struggles by the pair of redshirt freshmen kickers who have been handling those duties, Sander Sahaydak and Gabriel Nwosu. Neither has proven effective at booting the ball deep into the end zone, something Stout did with impressive regularity last season.
In the Nittany Lions’ 41-12 win against Auburn Sept. 17, one of Sahaydak’s kickoffs went out of bounds. Against Central Michigan, Sahaydak and Nwosu each got a first-quarter kickoff, with Sahaydak’s only reaching the Chippewas’ 11-yard line and Nwosu’s the 4.
Pinegar handled the remaining kickoff opportunities.
“Kickoff is not where I want it to be,” Franklin said following the Central Michigan game. “We’re very inconsistent. One time, we’ll kick it eight yards deep in the corner, and the next time, we’re leaving it at the 5-yard line in the middle of the field, so that is not where it needs to be whatsoever.”
If it’s any consolation, Penn State’s four opponents have yet to be the benefactors of good field position.
An unsportsmanlike conduct penalty during the Auburn game on fourthyear offensive lineman Sal Wormley forced Sahaydak to kick off from Penn State’s 20. The Tigers took advantage and returned the ball to their own 38.
Otherwise, the Nittany Lions have only allowed their opponents to start beyond the 30 once this season, which came due to Sahaydak’s out-of-bounds kick.
“Give credit to the kickoff team because we’ve covered that and allowed the starting field position to be inside the 25-yard line,” Collins said. “But it starts with a kick. We need to get that cleaned up. We need to get that fixed, and we need to be consistent with that across the board.”
The coverage team has helped out their kickoff unit tremendously, which has worked against the likes of Purdue, Ohio, Auburn and Central Michigan. But against Big Ten opponents that feature stellar speedsters like Maryland’s Tai Felton, who averages over 27 yards per return, or against stout defenses like Michigan’s, special teams could play a bigger role.
For Franklin, remedying those problems on field goals and kickoffs sooner rather than later would be to Penn State’s benefit.
“We got to be better in kickoff, and we got to be better in field goal,” Franklin said. “That’s coaching; that’s protection; that’s production in those units, as well.”