LSU Special Teams Battle Work in Progress With Multiple Players Not on Campus
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Special teams may be the overlooked phase of football but it's also arguably just as important as any other part of the game.
Football fans of any NFL or college team can point to at least one or two games a season that come down to a last field goal or missed opportunities through field position in the punt game. LSU special teams coordinator Brian Polian recalled three Notre Dame games during the 2021 season that came down to winning the special teams battle.
"We absolutely believe that in the SEC where everybody's got good players, the kicking game is going to be the difference three, four times a year," Polian said. "The special teams units are incredibly important and are the separators between teams that might be equally matched."
The approach for LSU, Brian Kelly and Polian is simple. Expect to see the best players out on the field in both kicking and punting coverage units. Polian and LSU believe the best way to win games is to be able to cover kicks and punts while also protecting both the kickers and punters to do their job.
Mike Jones, Greg Penn, Joe Foucha, Greg Brooks, Kolbe Fields, Josh Williams and Jaray Jenkins were just a few names Polian mentioned as guys he's seen excel in the special teams coverage part of practice during the first few weeks. It's a part of the process that can't be overlooked for the Tigers to be successful in that portion of the game.
"Think back to the Green Bay Packers, they get a punt blocked and they're out of the playoffs," Polian said. "As it relates to personnel, there will be spots where we use our best players and then there are roles for guys that will be core special teams players."
As for the personnel aspect of the kicking and punting jobs, these are two positions that the best way to describe would be incomplete. The Tigers have true freshman kicker Nathan Dibert and Notre Dame transfer punter Jay Bramblett coming in to compete with redshirt freshman Peyton Todd.
Bramblett will join the Tigers from Notre Dame, where he's currently finishing up classes and will earn a degree before joining the Tigers following the spring semester. There's certainly a level of trust that Polian and Kelly both have in the incoming transfer, who started for the Irish since the 2019 season.
Polian, who has been with Kelly for seven years, says the goal is to always have the punt unit figured out during the spring, making it the biggest point of emphasis for special teams at the moment. They want that group to have at least 60% of the installation in by the spring while everything else special teams related is just about creating competition and teaching fundamentals at this phase.
"Peyton Todd's got a cannon. Obviously he was coming off a surgery as a true freshman so he wasn't quite whole," Polian said. "He's immensely talented, we just gotta keep working on the fundamentals and he's doing that."
As for Dibert, Polian had never worked out the incoming true freshman kicker so he didn't know much about him when Dibert signed back in December. Who Polian trusted above all else was former special teams coach Greg McMahon as the two have a great relationship.
McMahon described Dibert to Polian as "unflappable" in the conversations the two had, making Polian comfortable with honoring the commitment Dibert gave to the program. As one could imagine, until both Dibert and Bramblett are on campus this summer, the competition at punter and kicker will remain incomplete.
"The competition won't be whole until we add Jay Bramblett, when we add Nathan Dibert," Polian said. "I'm pleased thus far and Nathan coming in is a lefty. We've only in the last couple of practices gotten together as a field goal unit. They're doing a good job and I'm encouraged."
This is a group that won't come together for quite a while and why the jobs likely won't be won until the fall. But building that coverage foundation as well as collecting data on those who are in the facility will be a primary goal for Polian and the special teams staff.
