DEL.ICIO.USFreshman’s leg steady under weight of ranking
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Athens — All you have to do is glance at the Georgia schedule to know that, sooner or later, a game is going to come down to a high-stakes, high-pressure field goal.
And then the runaway expectations of this season might be reduced to the performance under pressure of an 18-year-old freshman kicker from Fort Lauderdale.
Curtis Compton/ccompton@ajc.com
Blair Walsh showed a strong leg on kickoffs as well as booting a field goal and six extra points.
Remains to be seen, of course, how Blair Walsh fares in that moment.
But the first hint drew a figurative sigh of relief from Georgia fans: an impressive 52-yard field goal Saturday on Walsh’s first collegiate attempt.
“I’m sure there was a sigh of relief,” Walsh said. “There was on my part, that’s for sure.”
Rated the No. 1 high school place-kicker in the nation by Rivals.com last season, Walsh was recruited by Georgia to fill the void left by the departure of Brandon Coutu, who made a school-record 80.3 percent of his field goals the past four years. As a high school senior, Walsh made 14 of 20 field goals, 70 percent, including two from 59 yards.
Between Walsh’s signing in February and his first game, expectations for this Georgia season were supercharged by No. 1 rankings in the preseason polls. With such hype came a thinner margin of error for a freshman kicker.
“I knew I was coming into a great program, but never did I think we’d be ranked preseason No. 1,” Walsh said. “Absolutely it does [increase the pressure], but I try not to think about it.”
Others, naturally, remind him. “I’ve heard comments made that [kicker] is an unknown position for us,” Walsh said. “And that’s a fair assessment.”
Two days before the first game, Georgia coach Mark Richt said one of the things he’d be most curious to see is “how Blair Walsh will handle his responsibility.” Richt said later that Walsh had kicked “very well” in the first few weeks of practice, “then had a spell of being hot and cold.” On Saturday, Richt said, “he was on.”
Even before the field goal, Walsh drilled his first collegiate kickoff five yards deep into the end zone and made the first of six PAT kicks. Just seven minutes into the game, leading Georgia Southern
7-0, Richt called on him for the 52-yard field goal.
“I think Coach Richt was trying to test me a little bit,” Walsh said.
Attempting his first field goal from such a distance “did sort of surprise me,” he said. “I was, like, wow, that’s not how I drew it up. I drew up a nice short one.”
Instead, he started his career with the longest first field goal by a Georgia freshman kicker since 54-yarders by Hap Hines in 1996 (vs. Kentucky) and Allan Leavitt in 1973 (vs. Alabama). Neither of those came in a season opener. Walsh’s debut field goal had five or six yards of distance to spare.
It was his only field-goal attempt and left him craving more, perhaps this week against Central Michigan.
“One kick like that — you get confidence from stuff like that,” Walsh said. “You carry it over to the next week, and it’s absolutely great to get the first one out of the way.”
Bigger ones, tougher ones, loom.
