Ray Rychleski didn’t want to say the dreaded word, but then conceded it’s the best way to describe what Georgia Tech long snapper Sean Tobin is going through: Yips.
“That’s a word that nobody knows what it means but it is what it is,” said Rychleski, Tech’s special teams coordinator. “I’ve always related specialists’ play, kicking, snapping, to golf. Right now, he couldn’t make a two-foot putt.”
Tobin, a redshirt senior, has mis-snapped a punt in three consecutive games. After a snap sailed over punter Ryan Rodwell’s head and into Tech’s end zone and led to a safety in Saturday’s 43-24 loss to Clemson, coach Paul Johnson had seen enough. Casey Wilson, a redshirt freshman who handles short-snapping duties, was moved to long snapper. He will handle both roles in Saturday’s game against Pittsburgh, with Tobin as his backup. Two tryouts to find an emergency backup to handle both duties will be held this week.
“No excuses,” Rychleski said. “It’s just like anybody else, you have to make a change and if you don’t make a change, then it’s shame on me.”
Saturday’s poor snap was much like the one three weeks ago in the loss at Duke. Rychleski said Tobin may have been trying to snap it with too much speed. Usually when that’s attempted, the snapper grips the ball tighter and raises his rear end in an attempt to generate velocity. When the butt is raised, Rychelski said the ball will usually sail over its target. It’s not the fundamentally sound way that Rychleski teaches his players to snap.
Rychleski said the rainy, wet conditions the Yellow Jackets have played in the past three weeks shouldn’t have affected the snaps because the team does wet-ball drills during practice.
To help Tobin, they did extra snaps following the first poor snap. They’ve also lined up players over him during snaps in an attempt to rattle him. Nothing seemed to affect Tobin in practices. It was only during the games when the poor snaps would occur, leading to Rychleski’s agreement in the nebulous diagnoses of the “yips.”
“It’s not like he’s trying to do it, quite obviously,” Rychleski said. “He’s a fifth-year senior and I love him to death.”
Tobin wasn’t made available for interviews by Georgia Tech’s sports information department. Rychleski said Tobin hasn’t shared with him any feedback he may have received from Tech’s followers, but he said that Tobin isn’t hiding. He continues to be a team-first player. He is first to finish sprints in practice, and always sits in front for team meetings and special teams meetings.
“All players make mistakes but when a long snapper does it gets more publicity than normal,” Rychleski said.
With Wilson handling both duties and a search on for a third-string backup among what would seem to be a pool of several walk-on players, Rychleski also needs to focus on trying to improve Tech’s other weaknesses in special teams.
Johnson wasn’t happy with anything involved with special teams in the Clemson game, saying that kickoff return team didn’t block well, that the punt return team should have caught one of the punts, and that the team didn’t punt well.
The Yellow Jackets averaged minus-2 yards on punt returns, 13 yards on kickoff returns and 28.6 net yards per punt against the Tigers. For the season, Tech is 13th in the ACC in net yards per punt (32.6), sixth in punt return average (12.7), 12th in kickoff returns (17.8) and eight in kickoff coverage (39.7).
“Our margin of error is so slim everyone has to do their jobs, special teams, offense, defense,” Rychleski said. “You can’t have a bump in the road.”
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