Will Cotton Bowl come down to Special Teams?

A

AUalum_04

Walk-on
Curious to see how the Husker special teams compares to Auburn's......

"Kody Bliss, Punter, punted 41 times for a career-best average of 46.1 yards, which would rank third in the nation if he were not four punts shy of qualifying."

"John Vaughn, Place Kicker, a finalist for the Lou Groza Award, leads the SEC and ranks tied for fifth nationally with 19 field goals made this season, and ranks third in the SEC in scoring (7.4 points per game). He has two field goals this year of more than 50 yards and broke Auburn's career scoring record, now with 307 points, which ranks 13th in SEC history. Vaughn was also named to the AP All-SEC first team Monday."

Matt Clark, Kickoffs, had only 13 kickoffs returned the entire season....49 of 62 kicks were touchbacks, and no touchdowns were scored against the kickoff team....

Our Return game, both punt and kickoff, is average. We have potentially explosive return men on both return teams (Tristan Davis - Punt Return, Brad Lester - Kickoff), and only one punt was returned this season for TD.

 
Our special teams are not the greatest but I think our punter has helped out a lot when punting he usually can pin you back to about your 5 when he is in range.

 
Stats don't really show to much about our special teams. Congdon is pretty accurate inside of 40 yards but he doens't have the leg yet to go any farther back. Our punter is great at pinning teams inside the 10 yard line. Our coverage units have gotten much better as the year goes on thanks to the emergance of young players like Thenarse, Culbert, Spain, and Wilson. Our kick returns leave something to be desired but out punt returners have the ability to break one at any time.

 
Yes and No, The special teams should play a big part for both teams but not in a 'play making' way. It will have more of a factor in field position. It really comes down to who shows up with their 'A' game.

 
Our stats for speacial teams arnt anything special.

Our FG numbers dont look great, but we havnt atempted very many. Congdon is 5 of 7 on FGs. With a long of 40. But he is 53 of 54 on PATs.

Most of our trips into that area of the feild result in TDs.

Our punter is good at pinning opponets inside the 20.

Neither the punt return or kick return games have been that great for us. The only TD from any of them was called back from a penalty.

What AU needs to watch out for is our trick plays off special teams. We have shown several different trick pass plays out of punting and kicking formations.

 
Special teams are always a factor, as are fumbles. But the tigers don't have that good of an offense. Their passing game is very poor. They have no go to receivers other than Courtney Taylor, and he barely registers on the national charts. Their QB Brandon Cox has a poor TD to interception ratio. They will be able to throw the ball on us, because our secondary is our defense's weak spot. But Cox will not have a banner day in the air. They just don't have the tools to pull it off. They will struggle on offense.

This game comes down to our running game. If we can run the ball on the tigers it will open up our passing game. If we can run the ball on the tigers we win the game.

 
haha, we have a saying down here...

Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships. Take that for what you will.

 
AUalum_04 said:
au! said:
haha, we have a saying down here...

Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships. Take that for what you will.
Click to expand...
Absolutely....you don't win in the SEC with a mediocre Defense....no matter how good your Offense is....
Click to expand...
But the argument can be made that the defenses look so good because the offenses are so bad.

You need both to win championships. The best teams can win either a shootout or a dogfight.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top