Barion Brown's 100-yard kickoff return is part of the excellent special teams play UK has had this season. (Vicky Graff Photo)
Kentucky Football is on a roll. But not the kind of roll of which you might be thinking. Yes, the Cats are 3-0 on the season and 1-0 in conference play and already have a big road victory against the No. 20 Florida Gators but the roll I’m talking about is on special teams.
You know, those crazy kickers, punters and long snappers that all hang out together throwing the ball back and forth before the game while the rest of the team warms up. Yeah, those guys.
It used to be in the old days (pre-Stoops and even a little bit during Stoops early time at UK) that special teams was anything but special. Sure, UK has had some great place kickers like Austin McGinnis, Lones Seiber and most recently Matt Ruffolo and great punters like Glenn Pakulak, Max Duffy and even current punter Colin Goodfellow.
They’ve had some good kick returners like Derek Abney, Craig Yeast, Lynn Bowden and currently one that looks like he will be — Barion Brown.
But the roll I’m talking about is all the elements of special teams coming together at the same time. Here’s what I mean.
Colin Goodfellow currently ranks second in UK career average yards per punt at 45 yards per punt only behind punter extraordinaire Max Duffy (who by the way was also a Stoops recruit). Matt Ruffolo currently ranks first in UK career made field goal percentage (for kickers with more than 20 attempts) at 82 percent. It also looks like Barion Brown and Tayvion Robinson could be extraordinary kick and punt returners before the season ends.
Throw in a few special teams plays on the defensive side of the ball over the last couple of games, including the blocked punt against Youngstown State and Kentucky finally has the recipe for making special teams special.
Now, I realize this year’s team has thrown in a few clunkers like snapping the ball over Goodfellow’s head at Florida for a safety or missing an extra point because of a bad snap at Florida but even those plays were not backbreakers like they used to be for Kentucky teams of the past.
Kentuckycoach Mark Stoops said this when asked about special teams after UK’s 31-0 shutout of Youngstown State on Saturday, “Yeah, I thought they were solid today. Yeah, solid and, you know, our special teams, I mean, have been really good. I mean, y’all don’t bring it up unless we snap a ball high or something like that. You know what I mean?
“And that’s one person that’s hit thousands of good snaps. So like I told you last week, I wasn’t overly concerned about that. And even got our backup snapper today. And so, you know, the unit has been playing really good, you know, it’s a tight group.”
That seems to be a pretty good assessment. All those key players that are performing well on special teams have been playing at UK for a long time, they have a tremendous amount of experience and it shows.
But another special teams element to the Cats win on Saturday was the blocked punt early on that gave the offense great field position and allowed them to punch the ball in for a touchdown and finally get rolling. Those defensive plays on special teams have been critical in helping Kentucky gain some momentum back after some mediocre execution by the offense and have helped the defense maintain field position by executing great punt and kickoff coverage.
Kickoff specialist Chance Poore has also been a key contributor to maintaining field position with his booming kickoffs into the end zone.
Linebacker Martez Thrower is another prime example of what I mean. Here’s what he had to say about his punt block against the Penguins on Saturday.
“It felt really good knowing I could help out the team every chance I got on special teams and went hard and played. It really was supposed to be a safe punt, but he took too long to punt it, so I blocked it,” Thrower said.
That’s what I’m talking about being on a roll. Since the offense has been struggling to maintain consistency and finish long drives by putting the ball in the end zone special teams could provide the boost that is necessary to get them rolling. They did exactly that on Saturday. They also did it against Miami of Ohio a couple of weeks ago with a 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown by kick returner Barion Brown.
Those kinds of plays are back breakers for the opposing team. UK fans should be very familiar with those type backbreaking plays because they have seen plenty of them in the past from opposing teams. They make the difference between winning and losing big time games.
Since Kentucky still has plenty of big time games left on the schedule for this season I’m thinking we haven’t seen the last of special teams impact on the outcome of those games.
That means UK fans should be ecstatic when Ruffolo lines up for a field goal attempt because they know he has a better than 80 percent chance of making it or if the defense makes a key stop Robinson might be the player taking the punt to the house for another backbreaking play.
Just as Thrower said, “It felt really good knowing I could help out the team on special teams.”
After all, there’s a reason they are called special.
