Previously: Last year’s profiles.

West Bloomfield, MI – 6'4", 181
		Kornblue:	#2 P, #1 Combo
		Kohl’s:	5*, #6 K, #2 P
		Chris Sailer	6*, #1 P 5*, #11 K
		Prokicker	Not ranked
		Other Suitors	Army, AF, WMU, BC
		YMRMFSPA	Kenny Allen
Previously On MGoBlog	Hello post from Ace.
Notes	Twitter.
Film
Kohl's Highlights: Senior Year: Senior Year Stats: FG: 6/7 (53,49,47,37,32,22) PATs: 13/13 Punt: 44.8 yd avg on 17 punts, 10 inside the 20 KO: 18/24 TB(4 through FG posts,3 onside kick calls)https://t.co/B9O7h3m3t9 — Tommy Doman Jr (@tdoman36) November 16, 2020

Editor’s Note: Because the major sites don’t really pay attention to specialists, and there are now three sites who do, we are going to use those.

Michigan was in the market for specialists year since Brad Robbins and Jake Moody are fifth- and fourth-year players with junior eligibility thanks to the Covid year, and Will Hart (SJ State) and Quinn Nordin (Patriots) just moved on. Luckily there was an elite combo prospect at OLSM who grew up rooting for Michigan who’s been on the kicking radars since he was in 5th grade:

As great as his stats are, perhaps Doman’s most impressive kick came when he was in fifth grade and he hit a 32 yard field goal – in a game. In fact, it was the first in-game field goal he ever kicked.

“People were like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s so unheard of for a fifth grader to make a field goal.’ I was like, maybe I can continue working hard, I can maybe build something out of this.”

Ten(!) years later he’s averaging 45 yards per punt and is the Wolverines’ second-ever specialist invited to the All-American game, after the Great and Powerful Zoltan Mesko. Michigan intends to use Doman in all three phases. Harbaugh:

Punter, kicker, kickoff guy. He really does it all. You never know, one of the best punters or kickers around to be able to do all three things as good as anybody in the country at all three. If not the best. I think Tommy Doman—you’ve gotta be real good to be offered a scholarship out of high school as a punter or kicker. He can do both at a really high level.

[Hit THE JUMP for the boom]

He’s widely regarded the top combo kicker of his class. The non-specialist sites leave specialists behind but he’s the #2 to punter to 24/7, the #2 kicker to Rivals, and #3 kicker to ESPN. Doman traveled the country to make all the kicking/punting camps.

Chris Sailer had Doman their #1 combo prospect “without a doubt” and #1 punter:

Tommy is a big time punting and kicking prospect. He is an incredible athlete with off the charts all around college potential. Tommy has an ideal frame for a D1 Punter. He has a pure swing and punts for a great combination of distance and hang time. He averages 45+ yards with 4.5+ hang time. His best balls measure 55+ yards, with 5.0+ hang time. Tommy reminds me a lot of former #1 Chris Sailer Kicking punter J.K. Scott (Alabama, Packers). He is also an excellent kicker. He is smooth and accurate off the ground. He gets the ball up well and easily has 55+ yard range. His kickoffs are D1 ready. Tommy drives the ball into the end zone with great hang time.

Kicking’s “6-star” isn’t a superlative; they have a star rating system that goes from 2.5 stars to six. A 6-star is an “FBS Power 5 Freshman Year Starter, Scholarship Pick,” a 5-star is an FBS freshman starter, a 4.5-star an FCS starter or PWO, etc.

Kohl’s:

Doman has attended multiple Kohl's events with the most recent being Kohl's National Scholarship Camp in July of 2020. He is a long athletic prospect. His punting consistency might be the best in the country. Doman has great hands and is more technically polished than anyone else in the 2020 class. He makes field goals look easy and won the kickoff competition at the Kohl's Underclassman Challenge. Doman is currently the best overall combo K/P in the 2020 class and is a D1 scholarship player with a bright future in college!

Kornblue:

He is without question one of the top combo specialists in the 2021 class.

There’s nothing on him from Prokicker.com so I guess he skipped them. 24/7’s Allen Trieu deferred to the above:

On the radar early. With punters we trust the word on the major kicking services. Kohl's, Kornblue… all those guys, Chris Saylor. Any one of those events that Tommy went to, he was the top guy. Jamie Kohl, who I know very well, called him the best combo kicker/punter in the country. Michigan noticed that too when they had him at camp. He was originally a preferred walk-on offer and they upgraded it to a scholarship offer after seeing him kick again. He's a kid who really earned his way to that

This is almost as good as it gets for a high school football player who foots the ball: He was an All-American punter to Under Armour, Maxpreps, and USA Today, 1st team all-state in 2018, 2019, and 2020, All-Catholic League in 2019 and 2020. Via MLive, as a kicker Doman set St. Mary’s field goal distance record with a 53-yarder. He went 6/7 this year including three from 47+, which makes me wonder who was holding because that’s really hard to do in high school. In that article he claims to have hit one—not from a tee—from 63 yards(!!!) once in practice. He was also 13/13 on XPs and sent 18/21 non-onside kickoffs for touchbacks, including four through the uprights, which should be worth a point. He averaged 44.8 yards per punt on 17 attempts with ten of them dropping inside the 20. He averaged 40.3 YPP as a junior.

Sounds like a Go Blue kind of guy. Doman is one of many prospects in this class who would have gotten into Michigan on his scholastic performance. He has a 3.92 GPA and a 27 on the ACT, and plans on going into the Dental School. Agrees with MGoBlog that kickoffs through the uprights should be one point. Doman knew the campus so well that when the recruits all met up here for the big fall unofficial gathering it was Tommy who gave the tour:

“He knew so much about Michigan,” the elder McCarthy laughed.

Tom Sr. recently retired as a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Why Kenny Allen? Michigan’s most recent combo kicker/punter/kickoffs guy, though he was a preferred walk-on who emerged late in his career. In 2016 Allen was a traditional punter who averaged 43.7 yards per punt with a long of 67 and put just under half of them inside the 20. Over 2015 and 2016 he was 37/45 with a long of 51, and 99/99 on extra points, so put your favorite shoulda-been-a-TD from those two years in the comments.

“Hayden Epstein but accurate” or “Mike Gillette but first a punter” would be two other comparisons. Gillette is just too long ago for the majority of the readership, but he was an athlete on par with a standard Big Ten linebacker of the day, was Michigan’s starting kicker for four years, and made a 56-yarder against Ohio State in 1988. He was also the starting punter as a senior.

Guru Reliability: Exacting times Zero. Exacting because he was a regular at kicking camps for years and All-American. Times zero because #CollegeKickers defy all attempts to predict them.

Variance: Low for a specialist. Which means high. #CollegeKickers. Really though every one of the camps that saw him were saying nearly the same exact things.

Ceiling: Breaks it literally. Zoltan was the last player to hit the roof of the Glick, but he and Hagerup permanently nestled a few balls in the rafters up there. I expect Doman to add his own. They sometimes still use Oosterbaan, which has a much lower ceiling that is a little disheveled and has been waiting for just the right leg to finally puncture it.

General Excitement Level: High-minus. Isn’t Australian or a Romanian Space Emperor (from Space!) but as much as one can get excited for a punter prospect who also kicks off and could be a high-level all-range field goal kicker as well, yay.

Projection: Three- or four-year starter at punter where he regularly sends Zoltanesque punts skyward, and a few of them are returned because Michigan still uses the NFL hurricane punt formation and huge distance equals return opportunities. He’s immediately the #2 punter on this team behind Brad Robbins, who’s got two years left because of a medical redshirt and Covid but might not want to stick around for a sixth season in 2022. Since Doman is going into the Dental School and will thus be around for awhile, it would be nice to try to get a redshirt on him, which means saving him unless there’s an injury to starter until the final four games. Figure they do that, then unless Robbins sticks around for his sixth year and isn’t already feeling the heat, I think Doman can be penciled in as a four-year starter that takes him through his Master’s degree.

As a kicker there’s a steeper climb just because PWOs Karl Kerska and Cole Hussung are mostly kickers, though they’re both cross-trained. I don’t think he will necessarily be behind them, but if you’re asking what could get dropped if kicking, punting, kickoffs, and Dental School are all too much for a freshman to handle, it’s clear which time bandit might need to be sidelined first. On the other hand Moody has been erratic since his 6/6 debut. The entrenched starter could miss three in the opener, at which point Doman nails a 50-yarder and then goes 6/6 against Washington and 2/12 the rest of the year and 38/40 the rest of his career and starts a space cult. Kickers are weird.

He will probably get a fair number of kickoff attempts as well, and continue the Michigan Stadium tradition going back to Ali Haji-Sheikh of trying to put it through the uprights, unless they’re still trying to Foug it.