Hello: Quinn Nordin Comment Count

Ace



[Isaiah Hole/247]

The top-ranked kicker in the country is staying home.

Rockford (MI) K Quinn Nordin announced his long-expected commitment to Michigan yesterday morning after a high-profile recruitment that included an over-the-top commitment video to Penn State and, yes, a Jim Harbaugh sleepover visit. Those have been discusses ad nauseam, so let's focus on football, and how good Nordin is at kicking one.

GURU RATINGS

Scout Rivals ESPN 247 247 Comp
4*, #1 K 3*, #1 K 3*, 76, #9 K 3*, 83, #1 K 3*, #1 K

Nordin is the top-ranked kicker in the country to every recruiting site save ESPN, which still has him as a top-ten prospect at the position. He's listed at either 6'1" or 6'2" and 200 pounds.

[Hit THE JUMP for the informative portion.]

SCOUTING

The most detailed scouting report comes from former Michigan kicker Brandon Kornblue, who runs kicking camps across the country and ranked Nordin first among placekickers in the class:

Quinn is the Fab 50’s #1 nationally ranked kicker for the class of 2016. He is one of the strongest placekickers in the nation and continues to make gains with his consistency and accuracy. Quinn has trained exclusively with Kornblue Kicking since middle school. He spent four days of private training in January 2015 with Coach Kornblue in Naples, FL. During the training, he drilled a 65 yard FG off the ground (can be seen on our Twitter page). His ability to get great height, ball rotation, and distance on FG’s as a high school junior sparked national recruiting interest. At our Ohio Fab 50 Camp (July 2014), Quinn charted four monster kickoffs (with a 5-10 mph wind): 81/3.91, 75/3.97, 75/3.75, 77/3.8. His worst charted kickoff traveled 64 yards. He also continues to improve as a punter. Best punt at that camp charted 4.66/41 yards. Quinn has a great work ethic, athleticism, and toughness. He’s also gained significant recruiting attention as a high level lacrosse player but is focused on playing football in college.

The other available evaluation comes from ESPN:

Can easily hit the ball 75 yards, had a high percentage of touchbacks as a JR. The ball jumps off of his foot, fast leg, and great lift on his FG's.

Ball striking is impressive, repeatable steps on FG's, clean rotation on the ball, good lift on his kicks, strong athlete.

Smooth and repeatable swing up and through the ball. Continuing to clean up and improve tempo/consistency of his approach on KO's will help him become even more elite.

Very talented and coordinated athlete, he has a great frame and kicks with a lot of confidence. Great lift and power on his kicks, he should be able to compete immediately for the starting job, one of the best kicking prospects in the country.

The "repeatable steps" and "repeatable swing" should make him quite accurate; the most important thing for kickers in that regard is to have consistent mechanics. Nordin's high school team rarely attempted field goals—he went 2/3 with a 51-yarder during his senior year—so most of what we have to go on is the above, which is quite promising.

OFFERS

Nordin held offers from Arizona State, Baylor, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Louisville, Michigan State, Penn State, Pitt, USC, and a bunch of MAC schools.

HIGH SCHOOL

Nordin attends Rockford, which recently produced Michigan guard Ben Braden.

STATS

Nordin already has an MGoBlue profile that contains his junior and senior stats:

• Punted 10 times as a senior, with seven going for 50+ yards, including a 67-yard career long (52.9 avg.); had six punts downed inside the opponent's 20-yard line

• Converted 2-3 field goal attempts with a long of 51 during senior year 19 of his 23 kickoffs went for touchbacks as a senior

• Punted the ball 26 times for 1,020 yards (39.2 avg.) with a long of 55 as a junior

• Totaled 12 kicks inside the opposition's 20-yard line and had five kicks of 50+ yards junior year

• 22 of his 29 kickoffs resulted in touchbacks as a junior

Again, not many actual field goal attempts, but the leg strength is apparent.

FAKE 40 TIME

Nordin doesn't have a listed 40 time. As a former high-level lacrosse prospect, he should be more athletic than your average kicker.

VIDEO

Early-season senior clips include his 51-yard field goal:

Full junior highlights:

Kickoff workout at Penn State's camp last summer:

PREDICTION BASED ON FLIMSY EVIDENCE

Nordin could see the field right away if Michigan doesn't want to saddle Kenny Allen with kicking, punting, and kickoff duties. Given how well Allen performed last year—and that Allen was originally brought in to punt, the one aspect he didn't handle in 2015—it may be more realistic to expect Nordin to redshirt before competing with Andrew David for the placekicking and kickoff spots in 2017. Given the coaches decided to use a scholarship on Nordin just a year after David was brought in on scholarship, Nordin is the favorite to take over for Allen—though, of course, trying to predict #collegekickers is difficult at best.

UPSHOT FOR THE REST OF THE CLASS

It has a kicker.

Comments

bluesparkhitsy…

February 5th, 2016 at 12:01 PM ^

No, you see offensive linemen on half the plays in a game and by watching can get all sorts of data points on their performance. Also, star ratings are useful only insofar as they provide a proxy for characteristics that are not readily observable from stats. With kickers, you know without even looking at them how many attempts they made, from where, and what the result was. With offensive linemen, the stars have more of a story to tell.




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Ali G Bomaye

February 4th, 2016 at 1:36 PM ^

I don't think it's because kickers aren't valuable, I think it's because they are so tough to rate.  If you show up to a game to scout a WR, and you have his 40 time and watch him run a few routes and catch a few passes, you know about how good he is. But if you show up to scout a kicker, how the hell are you going to discern how good he is?

Ali G Bomaye

February 4th, 2016 at 2:18 PM ^

You might only see a kicker attempt one or two field goals per game (or in Nordin's case, way less than that), and a couple kickoffs. That gives a scout a much smaller sample size than you get at other positions that are on the field 60-80 plays per game.

In addition, you can't just break down the numbers. Maybe a high school kicker is 12/15 on FGs for the year, which sounds impressive, but his coach never asked him to attempt one outside 30 yards. Or maybe a kicker only averages 35 yards per punt, but his coach has asked him to kick high and short to erase any possibility of a return.

Finally, the technique of kickers is a mystery to a lot of scouts. A guy swinging his leg to kick a ball looks a lot like any other guy swinging his leg to kick a ball. It takes a kicking expert to really analyze the motion.

Bigku22

February 4th, 2016 at 2:53 PM ^

Are they pretty historically accurate? Haven't looked at how they've rated past kickers vs college production. Although having Quinn #1 as s kid who had "exclusively worked with Kornblue since middle school" seems a little...like a sales pitch. But I agree having a good kicker at the college level is a huge value.

Ace

February 4th, 2016 at 1:44 PM ^

1. Rockford is a really good program that tends to dominate their division opponents.

2. Aggressive fourth-down strategy tends to be the norm in high school and coaches tend to stick with their ways.

3. It's not just about having a good kicker. You need a reliable long-snapper and holder, too. The former can be especially tough to find at the high school level, and unless you have a dedicated long-snapper, you're taking practice time away from working at positions that are going to be on the field a whole lot more.

stephenrjking

February 4th, 2016 at 1:16 PM ^

What kind of season did Rockford have this year? A lot of HS teams eschew field goals, but in most cases that's because their chance of conversion is low. A kicker this good would be a huge weapon in a low-scoring game when stuck in long-yardage situations on the opponent half. A guy like Nordin could flip a couple games a year on some teams.

OTOH if Rockford just steamrolled most of their opponents with an unstoppable offense the situations where kicking makes sense are much less frequent.

Blue Mike

February 4th, 2016 at 2:15 PM ^

I wouldn't call them a "powerhouse", they went 8-4 this year.  They are a good team, but not a great team typically.  

Looking at their stats, Quinn wasn't even the only field goal kicker this year (did he get hurt or something?).  Rockford went 4-6 on field goals overall, with Quinn making from 32 and 51, and missing from 36.  All of his attempts were in the first three games of the year.

Rockford's opponents only attempted 3 field goals all year, for comparison.  Field goals just aren't a big part of HS football, at least not in this area.  Too much goes wrong to make them worth it.  Heck, most teams miss at least one extra point a game, so I can't imagine coaches have too much confidence in a field goal attempt.

Blue Mike

February 4th, 2016 at 2:28 PM ^

To look into it further (Rockford has keeps and publishes excellent stats):  Quinn was 14-19  as a sophmore (nothing made longer than 39 yards, three misses were 40+), then 3-7 as a junior, again with nothing made longer than 39. He only attempted one FG that year longer than 39, which he missed from 46.

I'd guess kickers are evaluated in camps and other such settings much more than at games. Scouts aren't going to go to the game to evaluate a kicker if they aren't sure he's even going to get to kick once.

alum96

February 4th, 2016 at 3:43 PM ^

Good info.

Sounds like from the scouting report and your info he has a great leg with a lot of power and has some work to do on accuracy.   Having college level long snapper and holder should help too. 

We will have the unique case of 2 scholarship kickers competing in 2017 so I assume the loser will be off to another school after losing the competition so not worried.  1 of these 2 will figure it out after the Allen era.

 

DK81

February 5th, 2016 at 3:02 AM ^

Fair point about the powerhouse comment (No love lost for Rockford from me). They were always really good back when I played ball in the area so I just assumed they were still dominant. After looking up records from the last couple years it looks like a couple of the former dominant teams in West Michigan have fallen on hard times since they realigned the OK conferences.

Brian.

February 4th, 2016 at 1:20 PM ^

just use him for longer field goals next year because of his strong leg or maybe just as a punter. Either way, with that gifted leg of his I expect him to do something next year.

Perkis-Size Me

February 4th, 2016 at 1:38 PM ^

Good to see he's got a strong leg, but going 2/3 in a full year of football makes me wonder how much pressure he's really had to handle.

Michigan will be calling on him a lot more than 3 times over his career, and some of those situations may very well be high pressure, difference between winning and losing kinds of situations.

Not trying to knock the kid at all. He could be a star here, but kicking only three FGs in game situations isn't a ton of data to go by.




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DonAZ

February 4th, 2016 at 1:44 PM ^

I love me a good, consistent, reliable, cardiac-avoiding kicker.

I am hoping Nordin is that guy.

While I'd love him to be that guy who hits an occasional 60+ yarder, I'd much rather have him be the guy that can nail it consistently from 40 to 50+.

If he's that guy ... then I'm on board 100% with a scholarship for him.

Indonacious

February 4th, 2016 at 1:44 PM ^

I wonder what this means for Andrew David, if anything? Harbaugh must have really liked Nordin or really felt uncomfortable with David, as I am not sure how common it is it for schools to have 2 scholarship kickers on their roster (+ scholarship punter).

UM Fan from Sydney

February 4th, 2016 at 1:48 PM ^

ESPN really does suck at recruiting. How can they have this kid rated the 9th best kicker while the other three have him the top-ranked?

Wolverine 73

February 4th, 2016 at 1:50 PM ^

Seemed odd to use a scholarship on a kicker a year after using one on another.  David was supposed to have a strong leg and be a top kicker too.  Anyone know what's up with him?  The coaching staff can't be very high on him right now or they wouldn't have used another scholarship on a K.

UM Fan from Sydney

February 4th, 2016 at 2:22 PM ^

The fact that most of Hayden's kickoffs were touchbacks was good back then, but with the amended yard line from where the kickoff now occurs make it easy to have just about every kick go out of the endzone. I like Meyer's approach - kick the ball short on purpose but get your speed guys down there to make the tackle short of the 25-yard line. I have noticed many coaches taking that approach, actually. It makes sense. Why give your opponent a free 25 yards? Kick the ball short of the end zone but make sure your guys tackle before the 25.