Ohio State didn’t have to worry much about its kicker and punter for the past few seasons.
Drue Chrisman was a consistently reliable punter throughout his Ohio State career, averaging between 43 and 45 yards per punt in each of his four seasons as the Buckeyes’ starting punter. Blake Haubeil got his job done far more often than not as Ohio State’s kicker, making 80 percent of his career field goal attempts and never missing an extra point on 146 tries.
That’s why both of them landed contracts with NFL teams shortly after this year’s draft and have the opportunity to compete for jobs in the league this summer. But that leaves Ohio State with unproven players in the roles they previously held.
Jake Seibert kicked in three games last season, when Haubeil missed two games with a groin injury and then the national championship game after a positive COVID-19 test, but his only made field goal came from 23 yards out. He missed his only other field goal attempt in those games, a 44-yard kick against Indiana, and he went 0-for-2 on 40- and 45-yard field goal attempts in the spring game.
One should be careful about drawing any conclusions about Seibert from such a small sample size of kicks, considering that he was the second-ranked kicker in the recruiting class of 2020, but will Ohio State be able to trust Seibert if it needs him to make a kick longer than an extra point early in the season? That could depend on how he performs in preseason camp, but it’s hard to know how a kicker will perform in the pressure of a game until he’s actually in one, and his misses in limited game situations thus far leave lingering questions about how ready he’ll be.
Meanwhile, Jesse Mirco is entering his first season of playing American football at any level. The transition from Australian rules football to punting in the United States is one that many other Aussies before Mirco have made successfully – including Cameron Johnston, who was one of Ohio State’s best punters ever from 2013-16 – but it’s still hard to know how Mirco, who is expected to take over punting duties immediately as a true freshman, will perform in an actual American football game until he actually punts in one.
Mirco was ranked as the No. 6 punter in the class of 2021, and the Buckeyes wouldn’t have brought him over from Australia with a scholarship if they weren’t confident he’d be their next great punter. His inexperience showed in the spring game too, though, as he averaged just 33.8 yards per punt on five attempts with only one punt inside the 20-yard line.
Ohio State's season opener at Minnesota will be Jesse Mirco's first American football game ever.
If Ohio State’s offense is as explosive as it’s been for the past few years, the Buckeyes ideally won’t need to kick many field goals or punt too often. But they need to know they can rely on Seibert when they’re forced to settle for a field goal in a close game, and that they can rely on Mirco to flip the field when their offense gets stopped, and they’ll go into the season without in-game proof that they actually can.
New special teams coordinator Parker Fleming did say before the spring game that he was pleased with how they were improving.
“I think that their development this spring has been key,” Fleming said. “And they’re going to have to continue to develop through the summer and fall camp for it to really maximize where they are. But so far, it’s been really good.”
Beyond the kicker and punter, there are some question marks elsewhere on the special teams units, too. Kickoff and punt returns have been a weakness for Ohio State, as the Buckeyes haven’t had many explosive plays in either area in recent seasons, and Fleming acknowledged this spring that they “gotta get some guys hitting some home runs.”
Ohio State lost one potential candidate to do that when Jameson Williams, who lined up as the kickoff returner in the spring game, transferred to Alabama. Still, the return game isn’t a huge area of concern for the Buckeyes; they’ve been one of college football’s 15 highest-scoring teams for five straight years even without many big gains in the return game, and their top kickoff returner (Demario McCall) and punt returners (Garrett Wilson and Jaxon Smith-Njigba) are back from last season.
“The past couple of years, with the fair catch rule being implemented (on kickoff returns), it’s kind of changed a lot of teams’ strategies,” Fleming said. “Our offenses have been extremely explosive, and that’s something that you just have to weigh. We have really good returners, we have really talented guys that we can put back there and we worked it hard this spring. And we’ll just see kind of how it goes from here. But we’re working it.”
A more understated concern for Fleming and the coaches is they’re also replacing numerous veterans who played key supporting roles on their special teams units, such as Luke Farrell, Tuf Borland, Pete Werner and Justin Hilliard, who were all staples on Ohio State’s punting unit.
With as much talent as Ohio State has on its roster, finding players to fill in those roles really shouldn’t be a problem, especially after last year, when the Buckeyes had a wide variety of players practicing in those roles to prepare for the possibility of COVID-19-related absences. Nonetheless, it adds to the uncertainty that surrounds Ohio State’s kicking game entering the 2021 season.
“We’re kind of replacing a bunch of those key personnel in certain spots,” Fleming said. “But we’ve had a great spring, and we’ve got a bunch of really tough, accountable guys that I think will be able to step in and do a really good job for us.”
