Jackets hope special teams can be special

By DOUG ROBERSON

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

This is the second in a three-part series looking at how the Jackets are addressing deficiencies on last year's team. Last week's story focused on improving pass-efficiency and next week will focus on limiting turnovers.

Today's focus will be on special teams - returning and covering kicks, punts.

Two times in the past five months Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson has publicly shown his unhappiness with his special teams.

Once came during the T-Day game in April, when Johnson wasn’t happy after the punter dropped the snap and casually picked it up again, so he slapped the ball out of the player’s hands.

The second time came at the end of the first week of August practices, when Johnson threatened to banish his special teams to the student section for the season after another lackadaisical effort.

Ask him to sum up last season’s efforts: “I think the return game was really poor, and we need to kick the ball better.”

That about covers it.

Of the four major phases of special teams: kickoff coverage and returns, punt coverage and returns, the only area that special-teams coordinator Jeff Monken said was decent last season was kickoff coverage. The others he described as embarrassing.

Tech was in the bottom four in the 12-team ACC in punting (33.1, 11th), punt returns (6.7, ninth), kickoff returns (19.6, 10th) and throw in field goals (12-19, 11th). Nationally, Tech was 73rd in punting, 93rd in punt returns, and 95th in kickoff returns.

“That’s not where you want to be if you are going to count on those teams to win,” Monken said.

But the difference between being among the worst and the best is only five yards in most categories.

Johnson says the punt-return unit is the most important on the field because it determines field position more than the others, so we’ll start there.

Punt returns

Monken said he would like to average at least 10 yards per return compared to last season’s 6.7 and to stop dropping punts. Returns will be helped by the addition of Jerrard Tarrant, who was suspended last season. As Johnson said this summer, a good returner will always help the return game.

Monken also wants to see Tech score a touchdown or make a long run on a return, something it didn’t do last year.

“If you do that once a game, you’re going to help your team win,” Monken said.

Punt coverage

Chandler Anderson said getting the extra six yards per punt that Monken would like to see might be as simple as walking a straight line.

Scott Blair handled most of the punting duties last year, but the coaches would like to see someone else win the job to save Blair’s leg some fatigue. Anderson hopes he’s the guy. To do that, he and Blair worked this summer on drills called “chutes,” in which they concentrated on shortening their steps and walking a straight line between two boards or pads. Anderson said the straight line kicking style is important compared to the from-the-side soccer style, which can make the ball draw or fade. By walking straight, they can kick a ball with a truer flight that will travel farther.

The result might be the 39-yard net average that Monken would like to see, which would put Tech among the nation’s top 10 teams.

Kickoff returns

The goal is to give the offense starting position from at least the 30-yard line, Monken said.

Roddy Jones returned most of the kicks last season, averaging 23.6 per attempt, with a long of 46. He has not been able to practice returns this month because of his injured wrist. Several players have been trying out, including Marcus Wright, who averaged 22.2 yards on nine returns last season. Johnson said the team will again use starters on the all special teams units this season.

“You are better on returns when you have a good returner, but you’ve got to give him some seams,” Monken said.

Tech has been working on its kickoff blocking and wedges (the wall in front of the returner) a good deal in practices.

Field goals

The good news last season was Blair was 12-of-13 from inside the 40-yard line. The bad news was he was 0-for-6 from outside that range.

But, he doesn’t hide from that stat and said earlier this summer that he has worked hard on improving his accuracy from that range.

He said he worked with former Georgia Force kicker Carlos Martinez, watched a lot of film and had adopted some new routines, including doing dry runs before each kick, in an effort to improve his muscle memory and fundamentals.

He said he would like to continue handling all kickoff duties, but understands the need for competition.

“I enjoy all three,” Blair said. “I just like getting on the field and helping out the team.”

Helping the team is something that Monken is counting on from the veteran players.

“The guys that are on our team and guys who were in our program last year need to step up and help us on special teams,” Monken said. “Hopefully they’ll take enough pride that our guys are embarrassed to about it and want to get better, want to be better blockers, and better coverers and better kickers. We missed some kicks. We kicked kickoffs out of bounds. Just bad.”