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GET IN THE GAME
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Sunday, 05 October 2008 |
 Kim Murrell/For the SDN Mississippi State punter Blake McAdams lets off a punt this season against Southeast Louisiana. Since switching his focus to directional kicking, McAdams and the MSU punt coverage unit have held two of the SEC’s top returners in LSU’s Trindon Holliday and Auburn’s Robert Dunn in check. By AARON SEIDLITZ
Starkville Daily News
It’s simple logic that a fan’s eyes follow the football.
So when a punter stands back 10 yards from the rest of the team, fields a snap and lets loose a kick it is easy for 40,000 fans to notice if that kick, that one play, went right or wrong.
For much of Mississippi State’s first game against Louisiana Tech on national television, those opportunities did not go right for Bulldogs punter Blake McAdams.
“Well, whenever you’re a kicker it is always very simple to see, it’s easy to see for fans, whether you executed or you didn’t,” State special teams coach Reed Stringer said. “When you get off a good kick you aren’t going to get a lot of praise, but whenever you have something go wrong you have a lot of eyes on you.
“These guys know all of that going in, though.”
Despite putting the ball inside Tech’s 20-yard line twice in that first-game upset, McAdams, the coaching staff and most Bulldogs fans watching remember the kicks that went astray.
He averaged just 31.9 yards per kick in that game – a number Stringer said can be misleading, but wasn’t in this case.
“We started off on the wrong foot. It was the entire team, special teams included, and that’s something I’ve talked about,” Stringer said. “The thing about Blake is he’s a very mentally tough kid. He’s punted a lot of times here at State, but that Louisiana Tech game was tough on him.
“He’s a perfectionist and he knows what we want out of him. Ever since that first game he’s punted really well.”
But therein lies the problem of reversing the perception of a player who hasn’t started off well.
Since that first game – as Stringer mentioned – McAdams has limited two of the nation’s best punt returners and barely allowed them to make an impact on the game.
First came Auburn’s Robert Dunn. The speedy returner burned Louisiana-Monroe for a 66-yard touchdown off a punt the first game of the season. Then he lit up Southern Miss to the tune of 103 yards on four punt returns, the longest of which went for 47 yards.
But McAdams, by the third game of the season, had made a change to his main objective. He no longer was going for sheer distance on his punts, he instead turned to hang time and direction as his main weapons of choice.
The result was Dunn fielding two of McAdams’ 10 punts, taking one back for 20 yards and the other for only 2.
“I think we’ve started to prove we can do a really good job,” McAdams said. “The cover guys have done a great job of getting down field, and there have been more fair catches off my punts this year than I’ve ever had.”
After a week in which he only punted twice against Georgia Tech, McAdams was called upon heavily again against LSU.
And Stringer knew exactly what to fear in that situation.
Holliday can boast of being one of the fastest returners in the country, and had taken advantage of punters who kick it deep. In those cases, Holliday was able to catch the ball, spot a lane, maybe make a couple people miss and then hit his stride.
“Look at what he did against North Texas,” Stringer said. “When they got a couple really deep kicks off – I think one was 64 and the other 68 yards – he took one back for a touchdown and the other for 70 yards.”
But against State, Holliday didn’t come close to breaking any type of return like that, due mostly to McAdams’ directional kicking and the job the coverage unit did getting down field.
“The last couple of years, the way we have improved in coverage has helped us so much in field position,” Stringer said. “When you play against Dunn and against Holliday and neither of those guys really hurt you, that’s huge for us staying in the game and keeping it close.”
To McAdams, the change to an emphasis on directional kicking has helped him get back in a groove with his coverage team.
That has gone a long way in helping McAdams improve in negating the other team’s effect on special teams.
“This has been a way of not keeping the ball in the middle of the field, and it allows our guys to come from the other side and use the sideline as an extra defender,” McAdams said. “We can flock to the ball because we know where it’s going.”
But by putting the bad start to the season behind him, McAdams doesn’t worry about public perception regarding the job he has done.
In fact, the punter believes the less he thinks about that the better off he’ll be.
“It is just something you got to block out,” McAdams said. “You have to look at the good stuff you’re doing, then go out there and know that you can do it.
“It’s just like hitting a baseball, you have to focus in, find something that works for you and keep it that way.”
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 07 October 2008 )
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