You shouldn’t be surprised if BYU lines up for an onside kick attempt sometime Saturday night. The Cougars at least need to give the look, right?
Georgia Tech recovered two onside kicks in the final 1:16 in the 48-40 loss to Virginia this past weekend.
And don’t forget that the Yellow Jackets pinned the Cavaliers at their own 4 with 8:50 left after lining up for an onside kick, forcing a UVA timeout, then coming back out from the timeout and kicking deep, forcing return man Billy Kemp IV to dive on the ball to maintain possession.
Virginia seemed utterly flummoxed by the very concept of onside kicks.
To his credit, head coach Bronco Mendenhall took full responsibility for the issues.
“I’m responsible for all of that, right, everything that happens on the field, and man, Georgia Tech did a really nice job of executing, and the way they aligned, our alignment didn’t match,” Mendenhall said this week. “We got out-leveraged, and we have assignments that are really clear, and a little bit of miscommunication that happened by the same two players back-to-back, and that’s all coaching, which is me.”
Mendenhall also conceded that he might have taken his foot off the pedal a bit when a late UVA touchdown pushed the lead to 48-27 with 3:50 left.
“One of the officials was close, and it was like at the three-minute mark, and the team was getting ready to onside that we were just playing, and I’m like, man, I wish the clock could run out so we could all just go home. Little did I know the last three minutes would be like a whole other game,” Mendenhall said.
“Yeah, my team learned, I learned, and yeah, it’s never over. I let my guard down for a second. I hope it didn’t influence the team, but I’m not perfect, but I’m glad, because they want to play great football, and they want to keep improving, and they want to do it from start to finish.
“If there’s things they were frustrated about because they didn’t play quite the way they wanted to, I’ll take it, especially when they win,” Mendenhall said.
You can guess that onside kick coverage was a point of emphasis this week in practice.
“I have to make it clearer, get them aligned more effectively, but really players play as they’re prepared, so we just haven’t put enough emphasis as to how many onside kicks will you defend, and we’ve basically practiced it probably in relation to how many we’ll defend, and that showed,” Mendenhall said.
“I need to put more emphasis on it. When I do, our players will respond. That’s on me, it’s not on them, and it’s correctable, so we’ll get the personnel in the right place. We’ll get our leverage and alignment right. We’ll get our communication right. I just need to give it more emphasis, which I did not and had not prior to that game,” Mendenhall said.
Story by Chris Graham
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