MARSHALL MORGAN AT UGA
Season; G; PAT; FG; FG pct.
2012; 14; 63/67; 8/14; .571
2013; 3; 15/15; 6/8; .750
So the kicker who missed four extra points last season has made two of the four longest field goals in major-college football this season.
You might say Marshall Morgan has come a long way.
The Georgia sophomore’s 56-yard field goal against Tennessee put him in a three-way tie for the longest in the nation this season, and his 55-yarder against LSU stands as the next longest. He has made six of eight field-goal attempts, including a 42-yarder to beat Tennessee, since being suspended for the first two games.
And yes, he has made all of his extra points.
Morgan savors the successes without forgetting the failures of a freshman season in which he made only eight of 14 field-goal tries (and 63 of 67 PATs).
“It’s week-to-week. One week you’re a hero, and one week you’re zero. That’s what they say with kickers,” Morgan said. “I can’t let it get to my head. I’ve just got to keep working hard, and hopefully this (success) keeps happening.”
As he struggled last season, Georgia attempted fewer field goals than in any season since 1998. But there has been no reluctance to call on him in his three games this season.
At Tennessee last week, Morgan boomed the 56-yarder in the first quarter — the longest field goal by a Volunteers opponent in Neyland Stadium — and missed a 39-yard try in the third quarter. Before he took the field for the game-winning kick in overtime, Morgan got a few words from coach Mark Richt.
“I think you’re the best kicker in America,” Richt told him in that frenzied moment, “and I wouldn’t want anyone else taking this kick.”
“I went out there feeling real confident,” Morgan said a few days later.
Georgia coaches believe last season was the aberration and this season the accurate measure of the kicker they signed out of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to replace Blair Walsh, now with the Minnesota Vikings, in February 2012.
“It was a year we knew we better get us a kicker, and so we tried to look at who we thought were the best kickers in the country,” Richt said. “And of all the film I saw, to me he was the best.
“Of course, last year, he did struggle as a freshman. Why those guys struggle, I don’t know. But I knew he had it in him.”
Assistant coach John Lilly said “the biggest thing” behind Morgan’s progress “is that he took the challenge in the offseason to really develop his skill and prepare himself for this year.
“You can’t underestimate how hard it is when you’re a true freshman and walk into a situation like here with the lineage of great … placekickers that we’ve had,” Lilly said. “Everything you do is going to be magnified.”
Of course, success also is magnified. Morgan has been named the SEC special-teams player-of-the-week the past two weeks. His six field goals in three games are only two fewer than he had in 14 games last season. He has become the fourth kicker in UGA history to make two field goals of 55-plus yards in a season, joining Rex Robinson (1980), Kevin Butler (1984) and Brandon Coutu (2005).
Morgan said he feels more comfortable and focused this season. He said he identified “the things I did wrong” last season, when he made only three of seven attempts between 30 and 49 yards, and found them “easily fixable.” Also, “my work ethic definitely has gotten a lot better.”
After missing five of his final seven attempts last season, Morgan kicked so well in preseason practice this year that “we’re sitting there going, ‘Man, I wish Marshall could kick the first couple of games,’” Richt recalled. But he was suspended from those games for an offseason boating-under-the-influence arrest.
In his second game back, he kicked three field goals against LSU and began to sense teammates’ confidence in him rising. They piled on him in celebration of the game-winner at Tennessee.
“Had 3,000 pounds on me,” said Morgan, smiling. “I was trying to get them off me. That’s a lot of weight. I’ve got asthma.”
Morgan’s performance last week brought encouragement about another criticized aspect of his game: kickoffs. He produced four touchbacks in his four tries. Richt attributed that to a new strategy of not sacrificing distance for hang time.
“We’ve given him much more leeway to try to knock it out (of the end zone),” Richt said. “We were trying to get distance and height, and now we’re just saying, ‘If you can knock it out, knock it out.’”
The suspension, Morgan said, “really made me realize my job is special, and I can’t take it for granted.”
He was determined, post-suspension, to redeem himself.
“It was so tough just to go through that and having everyone asking what happened,” he said. “That’s why I was really praying for my moment to come … so I could just show them that, really, I’ve been working hard.”
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