Shot:
Chaser:
A perhaps underrated aspect of the Kirby Smart era of coaching has been reliable placekickers. Aside from this critical missed kick demonstrated by Blankenship above, it’s important to note that Blankenship, Podlesny, and Woodring are a combined 200 for 238 on field goal attempts during Smart’s ten years in Athens, good for an 84% success rate. At 82.5%, 82.4% and 88.1%, respectively, the three placekickers all have the highest success rates for any placekicker at Georgia attempting a minimum of 50 field goals…ever.
The next highest rate was Brandon Coutu from 2004-2007 at 80%. Blankenship still holds the total points scoring record at UGA at 440 points, and Podlesny is 5th with Woodring at 6th.
I say all this to say, it’s been hard to doubt that we have clutch kickers who can win big games for us when necessary. The placekicking position haunted Bobby Bowden as it haunts Ryan Day, and one has to wonder why a school with bottomless coffers can’t find themselves a more reliable clutch kicker.
Maybe Day doesn’t feel it’s a big deal, maybe he does. Somehow, it’s the little things that add up, and it seems like Kirby does like to sweat the little things…appropriately.
I would love to know how many total games each player played in.
As you can see from your chart, good FG kickers have been a staple of our teams since the late ’70s. Everyone is going to miss some now and then, but when was the last time we had a kicker with multiple big whiffs??? I’ll hang up and listen….
It’s not an unbroken string but we’ve had a run good kickers as far back as Vince’s early days.
As others have mentioned, we’ve had good kickers since Vince’s early days. I can’t remember the last time we had a kicker which I didn’t trust.
Rather than that SC kick, I prefer to remember this one by Hot Rod in the Rose Bowl. It was a key moment when we needed it.
Butler’s 60 yarder put us on the map for FG kickers. We’re pretty much an automatic ticket to get to the NFL.
Woodring is 88% ?!?!? We need a cool nickname for that kid.
Hard to understand how a program as consistent as Ohio State has such a blind spot for kickers. Hell, Day looked like a steamroller ran over his kitten or something.
Good lord that scar game sucked.
I was so disgusted by halftime that day I decided to go run errands. I kept checking game tracker on my phone, which made my errands angry ones. I sat in the car outside the garage and followed OT on game tracker and just about rammed through the door when it ended.
I was looking at that list and remember all of them and some big moment…except Marshall Morgan. If you had given me a list of and asked to name the UGA kickers on the list, I would have absolutely overlooked him. For some reason he is a total blank in my memory.
Maybe this will bring his name (and a smile) back to you!
I would also add Saban to that list of coaches haunted by kickers. For whatever reason, either the best kickers didnt choose them, or they got the perma-yips once introduced to The Process™