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http://onlineathens.com/sports/coll...s-future-punter-kicking-game-little-scary-new
Georgia went down to South Florida to find its last two placekickers.
From Blair Walsh arriving in 2008 to Marshall Morgan following in 2012, the torch was passed and held for four seasons.
Each left the Bulldogs with their place in the SEC record books. Walsh is the league’s all-time leading scorer with 412 points and Morgan is No. 3 with 407.
Now, heading into his first spring as head coach, Kirby Smart can’t be sure who will attempt the Bulldogs first extra point or field goal come this fall. It’s not a comforting feeling.
“Scared to death is what it is,” Smart said.
A pair of walk-ons are the leading candidates entering spring practices.
Rodrigo Blankenship from Sprayberry High in Marietta and William Ham from Stratford Academy in Macon will get the first shot. Blankenship, a U.S. Army All-American in 2014, redshirted last year. Ham left the program after the 2014 season, but has rejoined it.
Walsh and Morgan were scholarship kickers signed out of high school.
Smart, hired in December, did not sign a kicker in his first class, but did ink a punter in Marshall Long from South Rowan High in China Grove, N.C., who decommitted from Virginia Tech.
“The decision on a punter, in my history, I’ve found that you can find more quality kickers through the walk-on route than you can quality punters,” he said. “After sitting down, sharing ideas, talking to people in the NFL, people that even have experience on the college level, we felt like as a staff it was going to be harder to manufacture punting than it would be placekicking.”
So Georgia offered the 6-foot-2, 223-pound Long who averaged 46.5 yards per punt as a senior and knew special teams coach Shane Beamer when he was a Virginia Tech assistant.
Long is the No. 8 rated punter nationally by the 247Sports Composite.
Two in-state punters were higher-rated and signed elsewhere: No. 2 Blake Gillkin from Westminster School with Penn State and Anthony Lotti from West Hall with Wisconsin.
Georgia already has Brice Ramsey, a quarterback, who took over for scholarship punter Collin Barber last season.
“Brice Ramsey finished the season out punting, but (Smart) said he wanted him to play quarterback a little bit,” Long told the Salisbury (N.C.) Post. “He’d seen my tapes, and Coach (Shane) Beamer had talked to him about me. I guess he just felt good about it. I was glad they finally did pull the trigger.”
Said Smart on signing day: “We feel like he can fill a void. He can fill a void for four years and be a really good one and then at field goal kicker we want to find out what we have here in the spring because we really don’t know as a staff exactly what we’ve got. We’ll find that out in the spring. We’ll also try to get some guys in here whether it be way of transfer of by way of preferred walk-on.
Lassiter kicker Mitchell Wasson came to Athens on a visit but decided to walk-on at Alabama instead of at Georgia.
Smart and Beamer will continue to look for other options.
“We’re going to try to get the best kickers we can to make that a competitive environment,” Smart said, “so we can improve the kicking game and essentially find a guy that can be the field goal kicker for us because it’s a little scary coming in for Shane, going `Wait a second. We don’t have a punter. We don’t have a returning snapper that started (after Nathan Theus finished at Georgia) and we don’t have a field goal kicker.’ That’s a little overwhelming but we didn’t want to commit a scholarship to a kicker as of now. We’ll see how that goes.”
http://onlineathens.com/sports/coll...s-future-punter-kicking-game-little-scary-new
Georgia went down to South Florida to find its last two placekickers.
From Blair Walsh arriving in 2008 to Marshall Morgan following in 2012, the torch was passed and held for four seasons.
Each left the Bulldogs with their place in the SEC record books. Walsh is the league’s all-time leading scorer with 412 points and Morgan is No. 3 with 407.
Now, heading into his first spring as head coach, Kirby Smart can’t be sure who will attempt the Bulldogs first extra point or field goal come this fall. It’s not a comforting feeling.
“Scared to death is what it is,” Smart said.
A pair of walk-ons are the leading candidates entering spring practices.
Rodrigo Blankenship from Sprayberry High in Marietta and William Ham from Stratford Academy in Macon will get the first shot. Blankenship, a U.S. Army All-American in 2014, redshirted last year. Ham left the program after the 2014 season, but has rejoined it.
Walsh and Morgan were scholarship kickers signed out of high school.
Smart, hired in December, did not sign a kicker in his first class, but did ink a punter in Marshall Long from South Rowan High in China Grove, N.C., who decommitted from Virginia Tech.
“The decision on a punter, in my history, I’ve found that you can find more quality kickers through the walk-on route than you can quality punters,” he said. “After sitting down, sharing ideas, talking to people in the NFL, people that even have experience on the college level, we felt like as a staff it was going to be harder to manufacture punting than it would be placekicking.”
So Georgia offered the 6-foot-2, 223-pound Long who averaged 46.5 yards per punt as a senior and knew special teams coach Shane Beamer when he was a Virginia Tech assistant.
Long is the No. 8 rated punter nationally by the 247Sports Composite.
Two in-state punters were higher-rated and signed elsewhere: No. 2 Blake Gillkin from Westminster School with Penn State and Anthony Lotti from West Hall with Wisconsin.
Georgia already has Brice Ramsey, a quarterback, who took over for scholarship punter Collin Barber last season.
“Brice Ramsey finished the season out punting, but (Smart) said he wanted him to play quarterback a little bit,” Long told the Salisbury (N.C.) Post. “He’d seen my tapes, and Coach (Shane) Beamer had talked to him about me. I guess he just felt good about it. I was glad they finally did pull the trigger.”
Said Smart on signing day: “We feel like he can fill a void. He can fill a void for four years and be a really good one and then at field goal kicker we want to find out what we have here in the spring because we really don’t know as a staff exactly what we’ve got. We’ll find that out in the spring. We’ll also try to get some guys in here whether it be way of transfer of by way of preferred walk-on.
Lassiter kicker Mitchell Wasson came to Athens on a visit but decided to walk-on at Alabama instead of at Georgia.
Smart and Beamer will continue to look for other options.
“We’re going to try to get the best kickers we can to make that a competitive environment,” Smart said, “so we can improve the kicking game and essentially find a guy that can be the field goal kicker for us because it’s a little scary coming in for Shane, going `Wait a second. We don’t have a punter. We don’t have a returning snapper that started (after Nathan Theus finished at Georgia) and we don’t have a field goal kicker.’ That’s a little overwhelming but we didn’t want to commit a scholarship to a kicker as of now. We’ll see how that goes.”