Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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SEASON KICKOFF: SPECIAL TEAMS INVESTMENT A RETURN The Irish don't want another T 'Gong Show' on punt returns BY LOU SOMOGYI Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams in turnover margin (mi- nus-1.15), losing 29 while gaining only 14. The second was Notre Dame's 112th-place finish in punt here are two Notre Dame team statistics from 2011 that should have no place to go but up in 2012. The first was finishing 118th among 120 Football returns with a 3.69 average — an excellent grade-point av- erage in the classroom but an unflattering return-yardage figure on the gridiron. Entering the Champs Sports Bowl against Florida State, the Irish were dead last during the regular season with a total of three yards on punt returns. They moved up thanks to a 41-yard return versus the Seminoles by senior receiver Michael Floyd on his first-ever attempt. Why wasn't Floyd utilized earlier on returns? Even head coach Brian Kelly second-guessed that decision this August. "If there was a problem with punt return last year, it was uisite for the duty. Arkansas' Joe Adams was the top senior return man nationally in 2011, and he was selected "only" in the fourth round. LSU's Tyrann "Honey Badger" Ma- thieu was fourth nationally, including two touchdowns, and he might have been selected in the first round next year had he not been recently suspended. When asked after the first week of practice this August that the head coach didn't put Michael Floyd back there quicker," Kelly noted. "If you look at all the teams with great punt return teams last year, they had No. 1 draft picks — or guys that are going to be No. 1 draft picks — because it is so hard to return a punt." (More on that later.) Becoming a first-round pick is not necessarily a prereq- how the auditions at punt return were going, Kelly said it's still an Irish version of "The Gong Show," a bygone reality television game show in which contestants vying to make a name with their talent were rejected by the sound of a giant gong. By the end of the second week, the 2012 candidate list seemed to have been whittled down to four: senior run- ning backs Cierre Wood and Theo Riddick, freshman slot man Davonté Neal and — just in case more travails occur — fifth-year senior receiver John Goodman. The choices of Wood and Riddick are interesting. Wood, Tight ends coach Scott Booker was also put in charge of special teams, and will be responsible for improving Notre Dame's punt return production. PHOTO BY JOE RAYMOND season, primarily to secure the catch, with his eight return attempts totaling five yards. "The confidence is still there and I just want to make something happen," said Riddick, who this summer and after current practices worked extensively with punter Ben Turk on fielding punts, often with one hand behind him to aid his judgment and catching skills. Finally, Neal is the explosive playmaker from Arizona who rushed for 1,102 yards and 5.1 yards per carry last sea- son, has never returned a punt in his college career (just like Floyd last year), but he manifests the staff's objective of get- ting a playmaker back there sooner than later this season. Riddick entered the 2011 season as a starter, but two fumbles in the opening-game loss to South Florida led him to be "gonged" almost as quickly as Dayne Crist at quarterback. Consequently, Goodman was inserted the balance of the 66 PRESEASON 2012 with the triple-threat qualities sought by every program in the country. Whether he will be utilized immediately in that capacity is uncertain. "I've been working more so in the slot area, just getting that part of the game down first," Neal said. "We'll see what happens after that." The job description requires superior ball skills and is far different from kickoff returns, where the man who fields the kick usually has about 40 yards of separation from the coverage team. That brings us to … BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED