Hawkeye Punters Hoping Psychology Leads to Better Results

[#1DieHardHawk]

The point isn't that a better punter can be found randomly walking around campus.

The point is that Iowa - as arguably a top 30 football program in the country - should be able to recruit and coach punters that are not essentially at the bottom of national performance statistics.

The scary part is that many of Rastetter's punts were so poor that frequently the returner was caught by surprise by the ball landing early and bouncing or rolling another 10 yards or so (not including the rugby style punts). I doubt a statistical analysis could be done to compensate the final average distances by removing the rolls, but, if it could, it's entirely plausible that Rastetter would have been dead last in the country by a wide margin.

I'm generally a supporter of Kirk, but, it's frustrating that seemingly every season we have one or two players seeing significant time that shouldn't even be sniffing the field at an upper tier P5 program.

 

[CP87]

The point isn't that a better punter can be found randomly walking around campus.

The point is that Iowa - as arguably a top 30 football program in the country - should be able to recruit and coach punters that are not essentially at the bottom of national performance statistics.

The scary part is that many of Rastetter's punts were so poor that frequently the returner was caught by surprise by the ball landing early and bouncing or rolling another 10 yards or so (not including the rugby style punts). I doubt a statistical analysis could be done to compensate the final average distances by removing the rolls, but, if it could, it's entirely plausible that Rastetter would have been dead last in the country by a wide margin.

I'm generally a supporter of Kirk, but, it's frustrating that seemingly every season we have one or two players seeing significant time that shouldn't even be sniffing the field at an upper tier P5 program.

Do other top 30ish P5 programs also have one or two players who should not be getting significant time? Genuinely asking; I don't follow any other program closely, so I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me if many programs feel like they have one or two obvious weak links that the coaches should have fixed.

 

[CP87]

Just to review a brief, recent history of Hawkeye punting:

• In 2015, Iowa was returning a part-time punter in Dillon Kidd; he had averaged 38.5 yds/punt on 46 punts as a junior; as a SR, he averaged 40.2 yds/punt on 59 punts, named honorable mention All-B1G
• In 2016 KF recognized that returning RS Fr walkon Rastetter was not going to be the answer, and he went out and got Ron Coluzzi; Coluzzi averaged 41.2 yds/punt with a ton of fair catches
• In 2017, Rastetter was a RS sophomore, and I am guessing the coaches still were not sold; they used a scholarship on the #9 ranked punter in the nation in his HS class, Ryan Gersonde; for some perspective, every other kicker/punter on the roster is a walkon (Mick Ellis was on scholarship last year; swing and a miss). It looked like Gersonde was going to win the job early in the season (averaged 42.5 yds/punt on 13 punts, but with a lot of variability). But once he got injured, we were left with a very underwhelming Rastetter (37.8 yds/punt on 55 attempts, but that does not fully describe his struggles)

So here we are in 2018. What should the Hawks have done differently in the off-season?

Tried to find another Coluzzi? I am sure they tried, but talented and available grad-transfer punters has to be a small pool.

Spent another scholarship on a freshman punter? If they did, what are the odds he would be better than their current scholarship punter? Do you really want the Hawks using 2 scholarships on punters?

Go back in time and offer a scholarship to a punter other than Gersonde? Time travel has not been invented yet, and I don't think we have enough data on Gersonde to write him off. He is currently the #1 punter on the depth chart, and he has shown a big leg in limited exposure. He needs consistency.

I think we can fairly criticize the Hawk staff for the punting talent currently on our team. I think it is disingenuous to think there was some obvious quick fix from the end of last season until now that the staff refused to pull the trigger on out of stupidity or stubbornness. Putting faith in Gersonde and coaching him up has probably been the best play all along.

 

[Ree4]

Time travel has not been invented yet, and I don't think we have enough data on Gersonde to write him off.

To clarify, if time travel were to ever be invented, millions/billions of years in the future, then technically it exists now

 

[Hawk1960]

I was thinking Rastetter was more the rugby-style guy, do I have that backwards?

That's correct ... Rastetter has done both methods but the majority were rugby style later in the year if my memory is correct.

 

[#1DieHardHawk]

Do other top 30ish P5 programs also have one or two players who should not be getting significant time? Genuinely asking; I don't follow any other program closely, so I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me if many programs feel like they have one or two obvious weak links that the coaches should have fixed.

I'm sure it's a common thread. It just seems like for us it's almost a yearly thing.

There's always going to be weak links on any squad, but it just seems like we consistently have one or two getting major minutes that would struggle to make the roster at Cornell College.

That said. I do think with the added emphasis on recruiting the last 3-4 cycles, it's becoming less of an issue. Nevertheless, there is no excuse for this program to ever have a punter that bad on the roster.

To your other points, I get what you are saying, but, it boils down to recruiting quality depth. As fans, if we want to have a program that takes that next step, it is imperative that the coaches fill the roster with athletes that meet D1-level talent expectations. Not every player is going to work out, but it's on the coaches to identify recruits that project to this level. When it becomes obvious that a player doesn't have it, one has to question what the coaches were thinking.

 

[Stanzi]

It would be nearly impossible for Gersonde to be worse than Rastetter was last season.

 

[CP87]

I'm sure it's a common thread. It just seems like for us it's almost a yearly thing.

There's always going to be weak links on any squad, but it just seems like we consistently have one or two getting major minutes that would struggle to make the roster at Cornell College.

That said. I do think with the added emphasis on recruiting the last 3-4 cycles, it's becoming less of an issue. Nevertheless, there is no excuse for this program to ever have a punter that bad on the roster.

To your other points, I get what you are saying, but, it boils down to recruiting quality depth. As fans, if we want to have a program that takes that next step, it is imperative that the coaches fill the roster with athletes that meet D1-level talent expectations. Not every player is going to work out, but it's on the coaches to identify recruits that project to this level. When it becomes obvious that a player doesn't have it, one has to question what the coaches were thinking.

Good points. It doesn't seem like the punting thing is a common issue for the staff, but rather they made a few bad evaluations in a row, and here we are. I think @Fryowa might be onto something, they may have given Rastetter a bit too much benefit of the doubt based upon who he is related to. Then again, he was an all-conference WR, LB, and punter in HS, and his HS punting numbers are not that much different from Gersonde's.

The WR recruiting issues from 2012-2016, at a time when the staff was dedicating extra scholarships to the position, are much more troubling; but hopefully we are climbing out of that one.

 

[zellchiro]

This may come as a shock, but players do improve through working at it in college football. It's a crazy concept, I know.

David Bradley was brutal his first year as a starting punter but got increasingly better as his career went on.

Again, Gersonde averaged over 42 yards a punt last year. We haven't even seen him punt for an extended period of time.

But, yeah, we'll get someone off the flag football team to be a better punter.

I must disagree with you. I can only testify personally with this exact situation. I was a small town All State punter attending Iowa while Bradley was the starting punter in the early 2001-2. He was not great. In fact so bad that my sister who was working for the athletic union would often offer joke around with the coaches when helping serve them meals. At one point, she mentioned to them that her brother attended school there and was an All State punter. Next thing you know I have a phone call into me by the special teams coach. I return the call only to get Jason Baker on the phone who for some reason was back in Iowa. I was scheduled to come down for a workout and went down to work out with them. I did well even for not picking a ball for over a year. I averaged well over 40 yds per game in High School. I was asked for another workout and believe it could have led to some sort of opportunity possibly. Who knows. I actually turned it down as I was accepted into grad school early and didn't want to sit around for 2 more years hoping to get a chance to punt in a game. That being said Bradley did improve to become a decent punter. But I truly believe there is someone on campus who can kick the ball 40 yrds.

 

[hawkeyebob62]

Ok. I'm not a conspiracy theorist except for Iowa punting.

Fair enough. And unlike @RobHowe , I think it would be relatively easy to find a punter in pretty much any dorm, fraternity OR sorority on campus that could perform no worse than what we saw last season.

 

[hawkeyebob62]

No one here ever said it was easy or that kicking was the only thing they did.

Rastetter didn’t just suck at punting last year, he punted horribly relative to every single one of his peers. I don’t know how else one can spin it. To think that there’s no one out there who could have done a better job at all those things you mentioned is obtuse.

My opinion which is worth what you paid for it, is that he went waaaaaay to far into the season playing like ass and that they should have made at least some sort of move. It couldn’t have gone a whole lot worse and if it did then go back to Rastetter. At least you tried at that point.

Ummm...he has a 100% completion percentage. So there's that...

 

[hawkeyebob62]

His own starting QB can punt better.

His own starting QBs completion percentage is way worse than Rastetter's though...

 

[tksirius]