University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: Kick Starts
March 6, 2015 | Football, Featured Writers
By Lee Pace, GoHeels.com
It's been cold, wet and sloppy for three days of spring football practice the first week in March. Heavy, wet balls to kick. Slippery balls to catch. Sloppy footing despite high-grade “field turf” at Navy Field. Through it all, the Tar Heels have persevered—their kickers included.
“I've always liked practicing and kicking in the rain, because if you can kick when it's wet, you can kick when it's dry,” punter Corbin Daly says amidst a light drizzle on a 35-degree night on Thursday. “It's always something I've enjoyed.”
Field-goal specialist Freeman Jones smiles and shrugs. “I just let 'em fly, let 'em go, no matter what the conditions.”
Daly and Jones, both redshirt freshmen, are focal points of the Tar Heels' spring and summer development process as coach Larry Fedora and his staff seek to identify and groom new kickers at two of the three spots. Junior Nick Weiler returns to handle kick-off chores after a stellar performance last year (58 percent of his kicks in 2014 were touchbacks), but punter Tommy Hibbard and place-kicker Thomas Moore are gone. Weiler has punted and handled place-kicks as well and is particularly in play as well for the PAT/FG job, but the two freshmen certainly have center stage in front of them.
“They both know the opportunities they have, and they have the talent to do it,” says Jonathan Rutledge, a graduate assistant who supervises the kicking game specialists. “Now the task is to focus in and get it done. They're both really young. They've got to mature quickly and handle the speed of the game at the college level.”
Bunn's Jones and Charlotte's Daly both were on recruiting priority lists as their junior years in high school evolved in 2012-13. Jones committed to the Tar Heels as a junior in March 2013, so he's been in the fold for quite some time. Daly kicked for Nick Saban at Alabama and Urban Meyer at Ohio State before committing to Texas coach Mack Brown that summer, but soon the thought of the distance from Charlotte to Austin became daunting—“I'm a mama's boy,” he says with a smile.
Both were selected to the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in 2013 and were roommates in San Antonio. Jones made sure that he and Daly hung out with fellow Tar Heel commits Elijah Hood, Caleb Henderson and Bentley Spain as much as possible.
“We worked on him hard,” Jones said. “We wanted him to feel comfortable with some of the guys he could play with at Carolina.”
Less than a month later, Daly committed to the Tar Heels to become a preferred walk-on.
“The San Antonio experience helped,” Daly says. “I made a connection that week. I'm glad it's worked out the way it has.”
Both newcomers have significant more height than their predecessors, Jones standing 6-foot-0 and Daly three inches taller. Both have strong legs and can use their added length to create more leverage and whippiness with their delivery into the ball. It was a given that Daly would sit as a freshman, but Jones began August camp in 2014 with a chance to compete with Moore and Weiler for the PAT/FG job. The transition to the quicker operation time of high school to college proved to be daunting, so Jones was red-shirted as well.
“I had a great experience learning from Tommy Hibbard and feel like I'm really lucky to be out here,” Daly says.
Jones adds: “The red-shirt was good for both of us, we got to watch and learn from the older guys.”
Jones has the leg strength to convert from 50 yards and beyond and has worked hard to improve his step and swing. The coaching staff has made some adjustments as well to the protections in front of him to give him a fraction more time. Former Tar Heel kicker Dan Orner, who runs a kicking camp and coaching service in Charlotte, has tutored Jones and thinks he has immense potential. Jones sent Orner a text message after the Detroit bowl game saying he “flat out wants to be one of the greats at UNC, I want to be a Barth, a Reed and maybe a little bit of Orner,” and Jones joined NFL prospects Nik Sade from N.C. State and Bradley Pinion of Clemson for special workouts in Charlotte twice a month this winter.
“I want to work with athletes that want to be great and have passion for the chase, that chase for greatness,” Orner says. “My goal with Freeman was to get him around the lead dogs in the ACC and have him emulate them as much as possible. We have worked a ton on the directness of his swing on FGs.”
Daly's kicking career began in junior high when what could have been a tragic biking accident actually had a silver lining. As a seventh grader Daly thought it would be fun to ride his bike down a long hill in his neighborhood with no hands and no helmet. He crashed, fractured his skull and was told by doctors he could never play contact football again. But he could kick.
“The accident showed me that God was looking out for me,” Daly says. “It showed me I had a God-given talent.”
Rutledge and running backs coach/special teams coordinator Larry Porter see similarities in Daly and Tom Hornsey, the Ray Guy Award winning kicker they coached at Memphis several years ago. Hibbard's forte was the roll-out punt; Daly will kick more from a straight-line position. So far he's consistently hitting balls 40 yards and beyond with 4.0 to 4.5 second hang times.
“We'd like to get him to 45 yards and 5.0,” says Rutledge. “That's a perfect punt. That's what the NFL guys are doing. That's what Hornsey could do. Corbin's where that kid was his first couple of years. He can get there. He's just got to get more consistent and work on his timing.”
Daly is focusing on shortening his stride into the ball and thus improve his punt trajectory. Tall kickers tend to take longer strides, which can lead to lower heights.
“I'm focusing on speeding up and taking shorter steps,” Daly says. “It's coming, I'm feeling more comfortable every day.”
The snappers and holders are better in college. The oncoming rush is faster as well. The crowds are bigger and the stakes infinitely much higher. A key storyline into the fall of 2015 is how these bright-eyed young kickers handle the challenge and opportunity ahead of them.
NOTES: Joey Mangili, a junior from Durham, is the first-team holder with Daly holding with the No. 2 PAT/FG team ... Kyle Murphy, a sophomore and teammate of Daly's at Ardrey Kell High in Charlotte, so far is running No. 1 as deep snapper ... The Tar Heels will take spring break off and reconvene for a 6 p.m. team meeting on Sunday, March 15. They won't be back on the field until that Tuesday after spring break, but they will make up their eighth session of Blue Dawn at 6 a.m. on Monday, March 16.
Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace (leepace7@gmail.com) in his 25th year writing “Extra Points” and 11th reporting from the sidelines for the Tar Heel Sports Network. His unique look at Tar Heel football appear regularly throughout the year. Follow him on Twitter @LeePaceTweet.
