Didn't see it posted here So i figured I share the news. We just landed our next punter. Kohl's kicking academy thinks pretty high of him. Lfg. BREAKING: Florida has landed commitment from 2025 punter New Florida commit Hayden Craig is one of the best Below is a recent scouting report from Kohl’s: “Craig attended the 2024 Kohl’s Eastern Showcase Camp in May. He had a strong showing and a well-rounded day. Craig scored 12/15 points on field goals and 104.15 points on kickoffs. His best kickoff was a 65-yard kickoff with 4.00 seconds of hang time. His punting drill work was at the D1 level and he scored 105.6 points on his punt charts. “Craig has some of the best leg talent as a combo athlete in the 2025 class. Craig earned a rating of 4.5-stars in December of 2023 with a good day at a winter Showcase Camp. He scored 11 points on field goals,106.4 points on kickoffs, and 103.4 points on punts. His biggest kickoff traveled 71 yards and had 3.75 seconds of hang-time. His best punt went 46 yards and had 4,31 seconds of hang-time. Craig is a very good combo kicker/punter who could improve a college team’s roster with his leg talent!”
Saw this on the twitter thread. I made a half way snide comment about how I loved using a scholarship on a specialist. Now let’s get a special teams coach.
I keep hearing about getting a special teams coach but we have a special teams player each on the 1st team, 2nd team and 3rd team on Phil Steeles preseason all SEC list. It seems like many are concerned with the wrong thing.
But those specialist depend on the other players on Sp teams. A punters net punt yards wouldn't be much with out the other guys around him making the tackle and not giving up many return yards. The field goal kicker needs the other 10 guys to step up unordered to be able to get the kicks off and accurately, they both depend on the long snapper Rocco (2nd team prr all sec). The place holder is equally important to the FG kickers success. I think k the whole performance of the special teams was over shadowed by the double #3 snafu. As a whole we didn't do too bad. I would like for some kick return progress but otherwise they did rather well.
I think that's the point, though. We've had talent on ST, yet still field a disorganized unit on the field. The number of players on the field was something other than 11 at some point in just about every game when ST were on the field.
There really wasn't that many gaffes on Sp. Teams. The double # snafu and twice inbelieve we had 10 men on the field. But you see the thing about the 10 men on the field is it wasn't a penalty and it didn't cost us anything. It was on field goal attempts in short fieldgoal distance and the chances of us blocking a kick with 11 men vs with 10 men is miniscule. Of all the FG attempts last year in college how many were blocked? And how many FGs have we blocked in the last 10 years? It's a tiny amount even when they did have 11 mennon the field. Being short one man on the opps FG attempt also didn't result in them getting away with a fake fg attempt. And if you look across college ball there are a ton of instances where a team fails to get enough players on the field, more so now with the no huddle offenses. I would like to see less silly mistakes but very few special teams plays cost us last season aside from the double # issue. Unfortunately it is overshadowing what the did well once Trey Smack was the guy kicking our FG.
Well, the two number 3s did cost us a game. And, there's no excuse for not having eleven on the field on every play. That's the easiest part of the whole process.