Should we have onside kicked last Saturday?
So, should we have gone for an onside kick? Were we better off not chancing it? And if we should have gone for one, at what point of the game would you have gone for it?
October 18th, 2010 at 7:25 PM ^
Juding by our special teams play, I'm pretty sure the kick would've gone straight to the hands of one of Iowa's blockers.
October 18th, 2010 at 7:46 PM ^
Much more likely to have kicked it straight through the back of the endzone...for once.
October 18th, 2010 at 8:57 PM ^
it didn't go out of bounds first.
October 18th, 2010 at 7:31 PM ^
100 percent I was thinking the same thing or maybe kicks it behind his own team. Now wouldn't that be something to see. Probably would have done it after we scored our second touchdown. Catch them when they least expect it. You cannot satisfy everyone, but I think at that point when we had some momentum that would have been good as any other time in the game.
October 18th, 2010 at 7:33 PM ^
I like the onsides where the kicker dribbles it and recovers it himself . Do not know if our kicker could have done that but the thought of it being successful makes you wonder "what if"?
October 18th, 2010 at 7:35 PM ^
ya texas tech tried that last wk lol.. worked well
October 18th, 2010 at 7:43 PM ^
For that play we put Denard in at kicker. He might even score a touchdown after recovering it.
October 18th, 2010 at 7:57 PM ^
And it went 10.000001 yards, he could catch it himself, and run it down for the score. It would be a totally Bugs Bunny-esque move, but totally awesome at the same time.
October 18th, 2010 at 9:00 PM ^
But the kicking team can't actually advance the onside kick
larsonlo - ruining mgouser dreams one post at a time...
October 18th, 2010 at 9:36 PM ^
What he meant to say is Denard kicks in a perfect paraballa and it travels exactly to the goal line where Denard runs and catches it arriving a split second before the other teams return man. As this does not require running anywhere near relativistic velocities and causing the associated problems Denard should be able to easily do this.
October 19th, 2010 at 7:03 AM ^
October 18th, 2010 at 7:34 PM ^
I think in the end it wouldn't have mattered seein that they can't even kick the football on the field anyway.. so the other team was starting on nearly the 50 yard line regardless
October 18th, 2010 at 7:40 PM ^
They should never punt, always onside kick to maximize offensive opportunities.
October 18th, 2010 at 7:41 PM ^
I would have paid money to see us attempt an onside kick....that might have been the funniest thing I could ever see.
I got visions of the ball going 1 yd and our guys just standing around it while an Iowa guy picks it up and strolls leisurely down the field for an easy TD.
October 18th, 2010 at 7:47 PM ^
Our kickoff and punt coverage has been a special teams bright spot. It's become an achilles heel for OSU and Wisconsin so far this season. I should knock on wood now!
October 18th, 2010 at 7:42 PM ^
It is a low-percentage play, and if you miss the game is essentially over, given the field position the opponent gets.
If you kick off, you get several attempts to force a punt. Michigan forced five punts on the day, and I’d say their chances of forcing a sixth were pretty good, but for one snag: the out-of-bounds kickoff, which gave Iowa the ball at the 40.
Obviously, Michigan was unable to stop Iowa, but I think that was more likely than the onsides kick, especially with a walk-on kicker who had never attempted it before in a game.
October 18th, 2010 at 10:56 PM ^
That the odds of recovering at a time when it's not expected, rather than when they're ready and waiting for it, go way up. Correct me if I'm remembering wrong, but it goes up to closer to a 50-50 proposition vs. the small chance you have in traditional situations.
October 18th, 2010 at 7:42 PM ^
We kicked off with 6:55 left and all 3 timeouts.
So no.
Doing it at any other time is more of a surprise gamble than anything else and not something you can really analyze.
October 18th, 2010 at 7:55 PM ^
Iowa was going to run it, run it, maybe take a shot at play action pass on 3rd down. Rely on their Defense.
We had a shot fellas, we pushed them to 3rd & 8 and had a man in position. Don't blame Avery in any way, it's a tough tackle and he was in HS last year. He'll drop people for the next 3 years on similar plays. But we had a shot at getting the ball, down 7
October 18th, 2010 at 8:19 PM ^
Of course now knowing that we had two kicks go out of bounds against Iowa, we might as well have kicked onside kicks. But, how could you have possibly known that ahead of time? Before those two kicks, how many did we have go out of bounds this season? Out of how many attempts? I'm not going to bother looking up the stats, but it is something on the order of 0/30.
October 18th, 2010 at 8:28 PM ^
No, it was a little early. I just wish we could have avoided kicking it out of bounds.
October 18th, 2010 at 10:54 PM ^
Doing it early catches them off guard, and gives us a better chance to do it. Waiting till we cut it to 3 (or 7) means they know it's coming for sure.
October 18th, 2010 at 8:30 PM ^
Imagine how much more obnoxious the "hurr, hurr, hurr, FR DKROD NOW" crowd would have been if they had a failed onside kick to give them traction.
It's always like that on risky plays: if they work, you are a "genius." But if they don't, you "should be fired."
I don't always agree with every call, but I usually trust that coaches who get paid millions to coach football know a lot more about it than I do.
October 18th, 2010 at 8:30 PM ^
Maybe RR can investigate this. Its beyond me how we recruit decent kickers but they have not panned out lately. Anyway, just jokng. I'd love a 48 yarder this year to win a game,
October 18th, 2010 at 9:18 PM ^
Ninjas+Onsides Kicks= deadly conversion rate for Onside kicks?
October 18th, 2010 at 9:21 PM ^
I have to say that the kicks were most likely an abberation. I don't think they'll happen again. They didn't the rest of the year. On a related note, I think the average starting position for opponents after kick offs was about the 29 yard line, so the kick is basically only a 11 yard penalty. If you remember that DJK was wide open on that TD you'd most likely say the kick was insignificant and Avery making the tackle was what (ultimately, I'm not putting the whole game on his shoulders) lost the game for us.
October 18th, 2010 at 9:39 PM ^
I actually turned my friend and said this after the second 4th qtr TD. Surprise on side kicks have a greater chance of being recovered than our defense has of stopping a 60-80 yard drive.
October 18th, 2010 at 10:52 PM ^
I wasn't even talking about doing it in-exchange of kicking it out of bounds, or because of it. The same question holds if we were kicking it deep. It's just that there's a decent percentage for surprise onside kicks, and we were far enough behind that we needed 2-3 scores, and even if we had stopped them 1 out of 3 (or even 2) times, there wasn't going to be enough time/possession left to catch up. It wasn't a dig on OOB kicking.
October 19th, 2010 at 9:56 AM ^
Should we have gone with the onside kick? Um, yes, we were down by several scores with a defense that couldn't stop a decent high school offense. What did we have to lose? Playing it straight and not kicking was essentially accepting an almost certain loss.
But, just to defend RR, he is at practice and we are not, so maybe he knows that our special teams players - who apparently don't even know that a blocked FG is a live ball - would have no chance of recovering the ball.