Brian Mason Talks Notre Dame Special Teams, And He Had A Lot To Say

Notre Dame special teams coach Brian Mason spoke to the media today and he had plenty to say, so we decided to just go with the whole transcript!

On freshman punter Bryce McFerson and transfer Jon Sot

"(McFerson) just needs to master his routine a little bit. Sometimes he has issues, like today we played crowd noise. We’re talking about McFerson, and he had two bad mishits, because your heart races, you get a little bit rushed and you get out of your mental routine. He's just got to get a little bit more experienced and work on his mental routine and blocking out the noise so he can be a little bit more consistent in doing that.

"Jon Sot has been doing that. He's in his sixth year of college. He’s much older, so he knows how to handle that situation a little bit better. McFerson’s extremely talented, he’s just got to learn how to handle some of those situations better. We know he’s going to play week one. He’s going to be the starting kickoff specialist, if we played today, Jon Sot would be the starting punter. But both those guys are talented, they both can be ready to go and will put ourselves in whatever situation we need to be successful."

What kicker Blake Grupe has done to improve

"So, just speaking as a whole, we lost five guys, five specialists from the roster last year. We had to bring in five new people, so we knew there was going to be growing pains. Especially in the spring, we’re looking at a field goal operation, we’ve got to have a new holder. The holder we’re using (is) not the holder that was here, he came in June. So, we’re trying to get five new guys, four of which came in June, to get as much experience together as humanly possible, to be able to to be a cohesive unit and work together.

"A lot of that, we have to have a great long snapper, a great holder and a great kicker. They all have to work together. We’ve got to get a lot of experience doing that. So, every week we’ve been here since June with Milk (Michael Vinson), Sot and Grupe working together, we’ve been trying to get those guys more and more confidence and comfortable together. And every day they come out we try to get them to be more confident and comfortable, and every day they come out they’re doing better and better So, that’s exactly what we’ve been wanting. We’ve been wanting to build toward September third and they’ve been doing a great job."

Who will be the punt and kick returners?

"If we played today, the starting punt returner would probably be Brandon Joseph, with Matt Salerno right there with him. They both have done a good job. We trust both of them to play in the game. They both would be ready to go in the game, if needed, depending on game situations or how things are going.

"From a kickoff returner standpoint, the starting kickoff returner would be Chris Tyree. That’s not going to surprise anybody. The off returner, we have a number of different people we can use and that’s a lot going to be, ok, depending on the game and the depth, we don’t have as much depth at certain offensive skill positions, as we all know, so there’s a number of different offensive skill guys we can use at the off returner that can help out Chris Tyree. That can be Braden Lenzy, that can be Lorenzo Styles, that can be Gi’Bran Payne. That’s really just going to depend on where we’re at in the game."

Is Sot the holder?

"Yes"

Sounds like McFerson easily won the kickoff job

"It took about five minutes.

"Some of those guys, you just know. It took one day of being in the summer and everybody’s like ‘We want Sot to be the holder. He’s the best’. He’s done it before, he’s got years of experience doing it. We’ve got to train McFerson and somebody else over the next year to be ready to replace Sot, and we’ll get that ready to go.

"And then McFerson just came in and he’s wildly talented, for a freshman and he’s going to be the kickoff specialist."

What do you want on coverage teams?

"Punt is different than kickoff. That's all going to be slightly different. Obviously, as a special teams coach, who wouldn’t want to play all the best players? But we’ve got to be smart on how we use certain guys. There’s going to be certain guys that have a huge role on offense or defense that maybe are on one or two different special teams. If it’s a position that we don’t have great depth at, they might be on one specials teams (or) they might be on no special teams, based on the depth of that position.

"There’s positions line linebackers and safeties (where) we have a really experienced, older group and a lot of depth, some of those guys are going to be on two to three special teams, because we’re rotating them on defense. So, that’s really dependent on the position and the situation. On kickoff, we’re going to be almost all defensive players. There’s going to be a mixture of older and younger guys. We’ll be able to rotate and mix some of those guys in there. We think we have a little bit of a luxury, as we talked about, with Bryce McFerson having a big leg, so we can be able to get some guys different experience in some of those different things.

"And punt coverage, we’re looking for the most dependable guys on the football team. It’s the most important play in football, where you impact the most field position (both) positively and negatively. So, we just are looking for who’s the most dependable guys. That might be a starter (or) that might be a backup. Usually, gunner-wise, you’re looking for you best wide receivers, because they’re guys that are beating press coverage. We’ll use some DBs there as well. That could just depend on where we’re at in the game and whose legs are fresh as well."

Any freshmen who have made their name on coverage?

"There’s a couple different freshmen that will travel and have showed up and done a really good job. The two though that would start today if we played today (are) Junior Tuihalamaka and Jayden Mickey. ... I was asked downstairs, well how did they stick out? We have a really number of talented freshman those two are more mature beyond their years than most other guys, so they’ve handled taking on a lot of information, processing that information (and) making good game decisions and just kind of being ahead, from a maturity and leadership standpoint than most people are when they’re 18 years old."

Did the existing relationship between Grupe and Sot give Grupe a confidence boost?

"Yeah, I think Grupe and Josh were both a lot more confident this summer when Sot was here."

Joseph catching punts with a ball in one hand

"We’ve had competitions to see how many balls you can catch at one time and then try to work on ball security. It got posted. Some NFL guys were doing it and Brandon wants to beat the NFL guys and compete with it, so he’s just having fun with it.

"He’s good, he’s got six. He can catch six at one time."

What makes the spread punt so hard to block?

"Spread punt, so assuming you’re saying pro style punt is kick sliding, there’s two wings on each side and a gunner split out. Three shield punt, usually everybody’s in tighter, you’ve got three guys back there. A lot of people will do a three shield punt team, because their punter is American and maybe more comfortable staying stationary and not moving around. The issue when you know where the block spot is, you don’t move it or have variability is it’s really easy to rush to one spot and there’s not a whole lot you can change when you do that.

"If you can spread the formation out or use a wing or change the block spot to different spots, it creates more variables on how to rush and where to rush to. Certain punters are more capable of rolling out or doing some of those things, so you’ve got to be able to change to what fits your punt team, but certainly the more people you can spread out and force them to cover those guys, then the better you can then be to cover down the field. That may be a longwinded answer."

Illegal in NFL?

"It’s illegal in the NFL."

Do you think college will keep it?

"Yeah."

Punt block personnel

"I feel great about our personnel. We’ve got a lot of really good defensive players, so we’re going to guard eligibles, we’re going to play defense and just run pressures and be aggressive and try to affect the punter and once the punter’s getting rid of the ball really fast and we’ve affected him, we’ll go into different looks and different hold ups and things like that, like most people would do, but the number one goal is to affect the punter, just like you want to affect the quarterback. The faster we can make him get rid of the ball, the higher probability he shanks it, the higher probability there’s less hang time and we can get more return yards. And punters don’t handle pressure that well, because most teams don’t pressure."

Grupe’s range

"His range is to 55 (yards), depending on situations. He’s hit from 53 multiple times in fall camp. That’s going to be dependent on weather and different things like that, but when you’re talking 50-plus across college football, it’s not a high probability kick to begin with. We believe he’s the most consistent guy at all ranges on our team right now, but that’s kind of where his range is at."

How long is the checklist of scenarios you have to check off in training camp?

"There’s a long list and most people have a really long checklist. I don’t know how many things are on that checklist, but there (are) a lot of things that we still have to get to and we’ll get to next week. He haven’t got to hands and onsides and those things yet, but there’s a long checklist of different situations that come up that we’ve got to hit on. I don’t have a great answer for you on that, now."

Are you still working with the linebackers?

"I’m helping out with the nickels."

How do you manage your time?

"Usually, offense and defense meet separately, so that’s usually you can structure that like the specials will lift with the offense while the defense meets and those things are offset a little bit. Times that they’re not, I go with the specialists, so it just depends on the situation."

How is McFerson at onside kick?

"Onside kick, can be trained. Anybody can be trained to do onside kick. That’s not something that’s necessarily going to take a unique skill or a unique....God kissed him is ways that he didn’t kiss other people’s legs, like he’s got a monster of a leg. To teach onside kick or some of the footwork or technique like that, that’s something that any of the guys that are kicking can do."

Percentage of touchbacks he wants from McFerson

"I would like to go 80 percent. I think that’s realistic. That will depend on conditions or whatnot. That would put him top-5 in the country."

Be sure to check out the Irish Breakdown message board, the Champions Lounge

Irish Breakdown Content

Notre Dame 2022 Roster
Notre Dame 2022 Schedule

Notre Dame 2023 Class Big Board
Notre Dame 2023 Commits Board - Offense
Notre Dame 2023 Commits Board - Defense

Notre Dame 2023 Scholarship Offers
Notre Dame 2024 Scholarship Offers

Ranking The 2022 Signees - Offense
Ranking The 2022 Signees - Defense

———————

Become a premium Irish Breakdown member, which grants you access to all of our premium content and our premium message board! Click on the link below for more.

BECOME A MEMBER

Be sure to stay locked into Irish Breakdown all the time!

Join the Irish Breakdown community!
Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown YouTube channel
Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown podcast on iTunes
Follow me on Twitter: @SeanStires
Like and follow Irish Breakdown on Facebook

Sign up for the FREE Irish Breakdown daily newsletter

Add us as a preferred source on Google