Arizona State Football: Alex Garoutte Performance Echoes Boise State in 2010

The Arizona State Sun Devils were in a big situation against the UCLA Bruins on Saturday night. They were in a tough matchup on the road, and they needed every point to take a win at the Rose Bowl. While many of the team's star players did their jobs, one man didn't come through with his role. That man would be kicker Alex Garoutte. 

On a night where the Sun Devils were hoping to capture their seventh win on the season, it was only field goals that would hold them back. The Sun Devils lost the game by just one point, but it felt like much more than that. Garoutte, coming into the game with a 75 percent field goal percentage, was the key to the Sun Devils' win, but he ultimately failed to do so. He managed to miss all three field goal attempts that night, making what would have been an easy Sun Devil win in actuality a tough loss. A result that lost the Sun Devils' footing as the leaders in the Pac-12 South.

The result of the game echoed the performance from the Boise State Broncos' Kyle Brotzman only a year ago. When Brotzman missed both of those game-winning field goals, he became the poster child for the failure of a kicker. It is tough, as the entire team plays incredibly hard to put their team in the best position to win, and it all comes down to a kick. It is situations like these where their athleticism gets challenged by media and the fans.

Garoutte's missed field goals seemed to have the same impact. Here is how the kicking situations broke down.

The first missed field goal came at the 48-yard line towards the end of the second quarter. It was a long field goal, so the miss was not surprising. At the time, it also didn't seem to matter too much, as there was still a lot of game left. The Sun Devils went into the half down 14-16, which was nothing instrumental.

The missed field goal didn't really seem to affect the game at that point either, as the Sun Devils jumped out to a 28-23 lead in the fourth quarter. Once again, Garoutte was called upon to kick a 36-yard field goal. This one seemed like nothing, especially since he has been kicking the ball relatively well. In the end, the ball didn't end up going through the uprights and the missed opportunity resulted in a UCLA touchdown. Now the game was 29-28 UCLA.

With 50 seconds left in the game, it seemed like a lost cause. By a miracle, though, quarterback Brock Osweiler had the ball moving, and all of a sudden with seven seconds left in the game, the Sun Devils were in position to kick a 46-yard field goal. After missing two already, including one this quarter, one had to assume that Garoutte had no other option but to make this one. There was no way he could miss it. The Sun Devils were in great position, they miraculously marched down the field, so nothing could go wrong. 

Garoutte approached the ball, and was immediately iced by UCLA. Nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps it was his second attempt, where UCLA had one timeout remaining and Garoutte was just waiting on them to call their second time out to ice him. Instead, they pulled the reverse icing, psyching him out on not calling it. Garoutte missed the field goal, and the Sun Devils lost the game.

This incident was too shockingly similar to that situation only a year ago with Boise State and its kicker Kyle Brotzman. Both of Broztman's kicks were from under 30 yards, so his situation was much worse. While all of Garoutte's kicks were from over 30, both games have a lot in common. The kicker, the guy whose only job is to kick the ball through the uprights, fails to finish out what the offense starts.

Garoutte likely will not see the same backlash that Brotzman did. The Boise State game was on national TV and it had bigger implications—that missed field goal cost Boise State the season.

Perhaps it did cost Arizona State its season as well, but luckily Arizona State and Garoutte still have a lot of time to work on turning this around this season, and perhaps still making a mark on the 2011 college football season.