Notre Dame's Kickers: Kicked to the Curb

The Notre Dame kicking game the past two years, featuring the first two kickers that Charlie Weis has recruited, has had one signature trait: inconsistency. And we’re not talking about your typical college gamble on a 40+ yard field goal attempt either.

This inconsistency is marked by the sound of every Notre Dame fan in the country collectively biting their fingernails whenever a fourth down inside the opponent’s 30 yard line or a kickoff approaches.

But the most puzzling component of this personnel failure is that not only has this happened under some of the greatest recruiting classes that Notre Dame has ever secured, but that these are scholarship kickers.

Both Brandon Walker and Ryan Burkhart are proving to be the weak link in a rebounding young Irish team that can ill afford to leave points on the field. Already we have seen the inability to pin opponents inside the twenty on kickoffs and lack of production in field goal situations contributing to an often-misfiring offensive unit.

As this season stretches on, the unreliability of the Notre Dame kicking game will continue to jeopardize close games and place undo stress upon a young offense that at times has struggled with mental errors.

Brandon Walker is latest Weis-era placekicker that has featured such mostly-dependable legs as D.J. Fitzpatrick and Carl Gioia however, unlike those blue-collar kickers of the past, Walker has continually struggled with accuracy in key situations. Although he has the leg strength to get the ball through the uprights on field goals of 40+ yards, all too often those attempts are wide to either side of the upright.

Last season Walker was a merely adequate piece of a completely underachieving whole, converting six of twelve field goals and 22 of 23 extra points. One can’t help but think that the reason the kicking game didn’t come under greater scrutiny last season is that everyone was busy watching the Irish crash and burn on a weekly basis through most of the year: the sound of the wheels falling off the placekicking unit was drowned out by the wailing and gnashing of teeth directed at the abysmal offensive effort.

Walker’s erratic kicking has been even more evident this season he is currently two for twelve on fields goals through four games. While it’s undeniable that he has been slumping lately and I definitely don’t want to kick a man when he’s down—especially a college athlete—there are some conclusions we can draw from his play thus far.

Namely, that Walker is out of his league placekicking at one of the most visible college sports programs in the country. He wasn’t very highly touted coming out of high school (he was actually more highly ranked as a punter) and hasn’t adapted well to the increased pressure of the college game.

As bad as the placekicking situation might appear, there is another area on Notre Dame special teams that is under performing as much or more.

As I spent the majority of my teen years living in the town right next to Wakarusa, IN and graduated from the same high school as Ryan Burkhart, I had a startling sense of pride that a bona fide

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