Hawkeyes Land Kicker in '22 Class

[RobHowe]

Drew Stevens Commits to Iowa Football

South Carolina kicker accepts preferred walk-on opportunity from Hawkeyes.

www.hawkeyenation.com

 

[MelroseHawkins]

Awesome. Boy he sounds like a good one. We don't get too many if any recruits from the state of South Carolina. Any from the past?

 

[NorthKCHawk]

So weird that a 5 star kid who is a Top 25 overall kid at his position has to walk on. I get that kickers are flakey and don't always pan out. But, it is a position that some programs undervalue at times. I think KF has always put more attention on his kickers and punters than a lot of coaches.

 

[Hawkfnntn]

So weird that a 5 star kid who is a Top 25 overall kid at his position has to walk on. I get that kickers are flakey and don't always pan out. But, it is a position that some programs undervalue at times. I think KF has always put more attention on his kickers and punters than a lot of coaches.

Yeah wondered the same thing. I've never dived into the recruitment of kickers to be honest. Is this 'normal' or not? The reason I would think it's not for them to walk on is because of the competition for them. If he's got 10 other schools all wanting him too not 1 of them is willing to put him on scholly day 1 to get him? I would think offering a top 20ish kid overall I would think would require that but maybe not

 

[PCHawk]

Looks to me like kicking services ranked him a 5 star. I assume that means he's a 5 star compared to other kickers, which is still good. But being the 25th best kicker is a big difference from being the 25th best overall player. Am I reading that wrong?

 

[Fryowa]

The thing is that kicking is pretty much a toss up. Not worth committing a scholarship unless you’re 100% sure the dude is gonna be great. Look at how many NFL elite kickers get the yips and suck for the rest of their careers. And the other thing is there’s no good way to really evaluate kickers in ultra-high pressure environments. It’s like the NBA picking a guy because he nails tons of threes consistently in a shoot around. Kicking camps can evaluate all they want, but until a guy gets in a loud ass u friendly stadium with 80,000 pairs of eyes on him at the end of a game, no one knows what he’ll do. Putting a K on scholarship when there are limited ones available is a HUUUUGE gamble.

Look at Blair Walsh. The dude was arguably the best in the biz at Georgia, but he completely flopped on the bigger stage. Some guys can mentally do it and others can’t.

To be honest, if I were a ST coach I’d want to know way more about my recruits head space and how he handles pressure than how good his leg is.