Rounding out our preview series is the most special unit on the field… Special Teams! This is a unit that Mack Brown has said needs to vastly improve from last year. The return game was nothing special and while the kickoff game and punt game were relatively strong, the field goal kicking left a lot to be desired. Let’s start there.
Grayson Atkins is back for his super senior season. He came in with a lot of hype out of Furman. Atkins was supposed to have a big leg, but his accuracy was off last year. He only connected on 12 out of 18 field goals. His long was 51 yards though but a field goal percentage of 66% isn’t going to cut it. He made 7 of his last 8 field goals last season and he is going to need to show that consistency the entire season. We were 50-56 on red-zone scores last year resulting in a percentage of just about 89%. The percentage is good, but we really can’t get that close to scoring and get no points out of it. Those types of drives that are supposed to be demoralizing to a defense end up being momentum killers for an offense. Atkins was perfect on PATs. Mack Brown showed last year that he hadn’t lost faith in him, so hopefully Atkins rewards him with a better super senior season.
Junior Ben Kiernan is back after a strong 2020 season. Kiernan is on the Ray Guy Award watch list. Kiernan averaged 43.7 yards per punt last year and has an average of 42.2 yards for his career. His longest last year was 62 but his career longest is 63 (which he set back in 2019). He has gotten 29 punts inside the 20 (13 in 2019, 16 in 2020) and 16 punts have gone 50+ yards (8 in 2019, 8 in 2020). Net punt average overall was 38.9 last season.
Jonathan Kim is back as the kickoff specialist. In 122 career kickoffs he has 97 touchbacks with only 2 attempts going out of bounds. He averages 64.3 yards per kick. Net kick average was 40.5 yards last season.
Coverage on both kickoffs and punts have been average and opponents numbers are similar to our own. Opponents averaged 21.5 yards on kickoffs and 9.2 yards on punt returns. We averaged 19.5 yards on kickoffs and 9.3 yards on punts.
The biggest question mark is who will handle the kick/punt return duties. Dazz Newsome handled them last year for the most part. He had 17 returns for 168 yards or a 9.9 yards per return average. Michael Carter handled the bulk of the kickoff returns. He had 8 returns for 156 yards or 19.5 yards per return. DJ Jones did have one kickoff return 18 yards.
I would expect Josh Downs to handle the punt returner duties. Downs is fast and can be shifty which means he is probably our best option. Downs handled both punt and kickoff return duties in high school. Khafre Brown has to be considered for both as well. Brown is the fastest guy on the team and was successful returning kicks in high school.
Ty Chandler will be in the mix when it comes to kickoff returns. He handled those duties throughout his time at Tennessee. DJ Jones may be in the mix as well as he did have one return last year.
This unit needs to show more consistency when it comes to field goals and it would be nice to get a little more explosiveness on returns. Kiernan gives us the ability to flip the field, and with a strong defense this could lead to more turnovers and a shorter field for Sam Howell and company.
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