ATHENS — After giving up a 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown last week, Georgia probably will add more front-line players to its kick-coverage units for Saturday's game against LSU, coach Mark Richt said Tuesday.
“We want to get the best guys that can cover, no doubt,” Richt said.”We want to be careful about it, but you’ll probably see a little more of that.”
The reinforcements could be much-needed against LSU kickoff/punt returner Odell Beckham Jr., who leads the SEC and ranks fourth nationally in all-purpose yards.
Last season, Beckham returned two punts for touchdowns. This season, he had a 75-yard kickoff return against TCU and a 60-yard punt return against UAB. More notably, he had a 100-yard return of a missed UAB field goal, which according to LSU research was the first missed-short field goal returned for a touchdown in a major-college game since Clemson had one against Georgia in 1968.
Beckham, also a threat at wide receiver, will bring his talents to Sanford Stadium one week after North Texas’ Brelan Chancellor burned the Bulldogs with the 99-yard kick return. That was one of four breakdowns on special teams by Georgia in the season’s first three games, although the first involving kick coverage.
A high snap aborted a short-range field goal in the season opener at Clemson. A dropped snap derailed a punt against South Carolina, giving the Gamecocks the ball at the UGA 18-yard line. And another high snap last week caused a blocked punt, recovered in the end zone by North Texas for a touchdown.
Georgia benched long snapper Nathan Theus after the blocked punt, finishing the North Texas game with freshman walk-on Trent Frix in the role. Richt suggested after the game that Frix probably would continue as the snapper on punts against LSU, but he was noncommittal about that on Tuesday.
“They’re both working right now,” Richt said of Theus and Frix. “We’ll figure that out at the end.”
“The good news on all of it is that everything is very correctable,” Richt said of the special-teams breakdowns in general. “If we can make decent corrections through us communicating better as coaches and also by making sure we have the right guys in the right spots, I think we can clean it up.”
