clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

PISSing away close games

Big Ten special teams’ special guys, week two

COLLEGE FOOTBALL: SEP 10 Western Illinois at Minnesota

Remember how I said some weeks I’d just kinda be mailing it in? It’s one of those weeks. I didn’t watch hardly any football, and my team lost, AND Adam Korsak didn’t get to punt this week, so it was pretty much a waste of a Saturday. Here’s the stats:

Purdue did have a new punter make an appearance this week, with Crospey taking one rep and booting a 41-yarder to the 27, for a 34.266 PISS. As I did last year with Maryland and Nebraska, I’m only going to have one punter per team on my charts, so hopefully it’s clear who the primary guy is each game. Mind the really big jumps in season average here; it’s only week two, and if someone didn’t have many reps in week one, their number could rocket or drop and it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s so strange to see Korsak near the bottom of the chart. That will change shortly, I’m sure.

I decided to also include some more basic punting stats to give context that PISS can’t.

I’m gonna give it to Amor this week, for obvious reasons. The game wasn’t competitive, but the Big Ten went 0-4 in one-score games this week, so that’s not really a factor. For a 49+ PISS, with a 49 yard/punt net average, congratulations to Barney Amor of Penn State for his first OTE Punter of the Week award.

I don’t do coverage team of the week, but if I did, it’d be Illinois this week. Negative return yards on five punts, plus a forced fumble recovered for a touchdown. Way to go, Illini. Really helping the young punter out. I do not know how I should be scoring that for PISS. I’m pretty sure it happened last year, but I’d have to look back at how I did it. For now, I’m just calling it at the point of the fumble, which was the five-ish yard line.

I thought I’d throw in some kicker stats this week, too, since they’re easy to do.

Purdue and Michigan both had multiple guys kick extra points, for some reason. Kicker of the week is Matthew Trickett of Minnesota, who contributed 14 points to the Gophers’ blowout of Western Illinois. He was the only guy in the league to hit two field goals, with a long of 46 yards. Easy work for the senior, who’s up to 3-3 for the season. Mitchell Fineran (Purdue), Jake Moody (Michigan), Noah Ruggles (Ohio State), and Chad Ryland (Maryland) were all on the Lou Groza Award preseason watchlist. Moody was a finalist for the award last year, and Ruggles took home the honor for the nation’s top placekicker.

That’s all I’ve got. Make sure to share your comments, corrections, and clips in the comment section, and I’ll see you next week.