Nathan Fisher / NJ.com

If not for special teams, the Pennsville (N.J.) High School football team could easily be 5-1 instead of its current 6-0.

In the Eagles’ game on Friday against Gloucester, the Eagles only had control of the ball for eight minutes, 50 seconds; yet somehow were able to score 27 points.

The reason, big plays from the special teams.

“I try to tell the kids special teams is an offensive play,” said Pennsville head coach Ryan Wood. “We have two great returners in (Ryan) Hawthorne and (Colton) Newsome, if we make the blocks and get them in space they can make things happen.”

Early in the second quarter of the game Gloucester seemed to have swung the momentum in its favor with a seven-play drive consisting of seven runs, ending in a 22-yard TD run to make the score 13-12.

Then on the ensuing kickoff, Ryan Hawthorne stole the momentum by returning the kick 75 yards up the middle for the touchdown and a 20-12 lead.

“We’ve been going over special teams a lot lately,” said Hawthorne, a senior. “I was able to get some blocks and break through the crowd to get to the end zone.”

Pennsville does not have an assigned special teams coach as Wood and the rest of his coaching staff, Jeff Fulmer, John Cooksey, Mike Hoyt, James Harvey and Howard Herrmann IV combine to focus on separate parts of the unit.

After the Lions tied things up on the next drive, the two teams were battling it out in the second half.

The Eagles put together a long 12-play drive in its first series in the third quarter. The drive stalled, though, as a key offensive offsides eventually forced a fourth-and-goal and a tipped interception by the Lions.

Once again with the momentum on the Lions side, once again the Pennsville special teams would come to the rescue.

After forcing the Lions to punt, Colton Newsome looked in a punt at the 17-yard line. He then followed his blocker, cut to the inside, found a seam and outran the defense for the touchdown.

“Colton is one of the best returners in South Jersey,” said Hawthorne. “Anytime he gets the ball in his hands he is a threat to take it to the end zone.”

Newsome also returned a kickoff 62 yards to give the Eagles first-and-goal at the 7-yard line in the first half; but the offense sputtered and turned the ball over on downs.

Not only are the returners and blockers making a difference for the Eagles, but also their place kicker Tayler Henze is. While the Gloucester kicker missed both of his extra point attempts, Henze was successful on three of her four PAT opportunities.

“She’s been doing a great job this year and (Friday),” said Wood. “Late in the game we were thinking about having her go out there for a field goal. She has stepped up and has our confidence.”

By Andy Rennecke / SCtimes.com

COLD SPRING, Minn. — Christian Pedroza didn’t start playing football until he was in eighth grade.

He grew up playing soccer in Willmar before he moved to Cold Spring in fifth grade. Soccer was always his passion growing up thanks to his dad, who was born in Mexico. Both of Pedroza’s parents are from Mexico. He was born in California and his family moved to Willmar shortly thereafter.

During one of his first football practices as an eighth-grader at Rocori, the players were asked to come up and kick by the coaches. When Pedroza went up to show off his leg, everyone took notice.

“They called for somebody to kick and I went up and tried it,” said Pedroza, a 6-foot, 175-pound senior. “I went up, kicked and it went from there. I opened some eyes I guess. I like football and it’s all worked out.”

Pedroza got his leg from playing soccer at an early age. Rocori doesn’t have a soccer team, so he settles for playing for the Becker Blaze during the summer. He helped lead the Blaze to a state summer title last month.

“I came here and it didn’t matter to me that there wasn’t high school soccer,” Pedroza said. “Sometimes I wish there was because I grew up playing it. Soccer helped make football easier for me. It’s natural and just comes to me.”

Pedroza is also a starting wide receiver and cornerback for the Spartans. But what stands out most to his teammates and coaches is his kicking ability.

He hit a 37-yard field goal last season and finished the year 4 of 4. He also had 15 touchbacks on kickoffs. He’s been nailing 40-yard field goals consistently at practice this year.

punter Sam Moriarty, a 6-1, 200-pound senior, talks with Pedroza a lot about kicking. Having Pedroza’s ability is a blessing, especially to the defense so it knows it can start against its opponent on the 20-yard line most of the time.

“It’s a good thing to have,” Moriarty said. “On offense, if we can’t get something going, we know we can get a field goal. When he goes up for kickoffs, it gets us jacked up. We both take kicking seriously. Since I’m the punter, we talk about it a lot. We like our special teams here. He’s really into it.”

Quarterback/safety Nate Meyer recalled first noticing Pedroza when they were both freshman.

“He was kicking touchbacks when he was a freshman pretty consistently,” Meyer said. “I think they thought about putting him on varsity then, but they had a senior who was a pretty good kicker. He started as a sophomore. He’s been around here a while. He has a boot. Not too many high school kickers are like him. It definitely helps us with our morale knowing we have him.”

Rocori second-year head coach Mike Rowe has tried to help Pedroza fine-tune his kicking ability. Rowe was an assistant coach at Minot State (N.D.) and Central Lakes College in Brainerd before coming to Rocori and was also a graduate assistant at St. Cloud State from 2005-07.

He’s worked a lot with kickers at that level and feels Pedroza has a future beyond high school. Pedroza said he’s being recruited by Division I South Dakota State and Division II schools St. Cloud State, Minnesota State-Mankato and Southwest Minnesota State.

“I haven’t seen his ability a lot at the high school level,” Rowe said. “It’s a rare deal up here. You see it a lot more in places like Texas, California and Florida. A lot of those guys just focus on kicking. But he’s just as good of a wide receiver and cornerback as he is a kicker.

“We’ve done some things to fine tune him. But I’m impressed with his leg strength and he’s gotten stronger as he’s gotten older. He has a future after this.”

Pedroza, who also goes out for basketball and track, attended a University of Wisconsin kicking camp in Madison over the summer. He wanted to go to more camps, but soccer got in the way of that. But he did find some things to work on and has incorporated that into his approach.

“They recorded my form and told me to plant my feet and arm differently,” Pedroza said. “I just kind of picked it up and put it into my game.”

Pedroza isn’t sure if he’ll play soccer or football at the next level. He’s being recruited by eight Division III colleges for soccer. Pedroza’s brother, Irvin Rivera, is a junior on the St. Cloud Tech boys soccer team.

Whatever he decides though, he knows he’ll be happy.

“It’s hard to get noticed for soccer when you don’t play it in high school,” Pedroza said. “I’m still up in the air about college. We’ll see how many offers I get.”

If he starts nailing 40-yarders on a consistent basis in games, more schools will probably be knocking on his door.

“I don’t know, our offense looks pretty good this year. Maybe they won’t need me to kick field goals,” Pedroza said with a smile. “But hopefully I can get one longer than 37 yards this year. I know I’ll step up to the plate and do it if they ask me.

“It doesn’t get old. kicking is a lot of fun.”

By William Browning / For Yahoo.com

Placekickers in the NFL aren't the first players that most fans think of regarding major injuries in the league. Yet on the first play in the San Diego Chargers' opening day win against Minnesota, kicker Nate Kaeding injured his knee trying to tackle Percy Harvin on his 103-yard return for a touchdown.

ESPN reportss Kaeding tore his anterior cruciate ligament when he planted his foot. He didn't even make contact with a player. Yet the kicker's injury is more common than what some fans may realize.

Relevant examples

In November 2010, ESPN reported Stephen Gostowski of the New England Patriots was lost for the season when he suffered a thigh injury. His torn muscle required surgery to repair. Matt Prater of the Denver Broncos was played on injured reserve a month later when he had a groin injury.

Placekickers spend a lot of their time practicing, warming up and also do kickoffs. Rarely are they called on to actually make a play and tackle someone. Despite their somewhat tame jobs of simply kicking a football, placekickers have suffered many injuries in the NFL's modern era.

Injury Frequency

The National Institutes of Health published a study in June 2010 regarding placekicker injuries. The study authors looked back on cases over the previous 20 years of NFL seasons. What they found was remarkable.

There were 488 instances of NFL kickers being injured. That's almost 25 injuries per year. If you take into account 30 NFL teams, that means nearly every team had some kind of injury to a placekicker during a season.

Luckily, NFL kickers often don't suffer season-ending injuries. A vast majority of the injuries (93%) were minor and the kickers were back in just over two weeks. Most of the injuries occurred in games rather than practice. The study further determined that younger kickers under the age of 30 rebound from their injuries in almost half the time as older kickers.

Injuries that require surgery usually take over 120 days to heal. The most common types of injuries are to the muscles and tendons below the waist. When Kaeding went down with a torn ACL, it was perhaps the rarest kind of injury to a kicker. The remedy proposed by the study is to simply stay in better shape through training is the easiest way to prevent injuries in placekickers.

Despite recent dramatic examples such as Kaeding, Prater and Jostkowski, placekickers have the fewest injuries among all NFL players. Often, their injuries are overlooked because they rarely cause hardships to their teams.

Dayton Daily News report

DAYTON, Ohio — Ryan Adams lived up to his billing.

“As we were looking at our recruiting class, we felt like we needed a kicker with a bigger leg,” Southeastern Louisiana University football coach Mike Lucas said. “We looked at a ton of kickers, but we wanted someone who could kick the ball out of the end zone on kickoffs.”

So, when the email touting the Carroll High School senior as the “kicker with a big leg” arrived in Lucas’ inbox, it got a look, even though the Lions football coach gets 100 to 150 email inquiries a day. Lucas liked what he saw.

“He had great hang time on his kickoffs and great distance,” Lucas said.

Next thing Adams knew, he was heading to Hammond, La., for an official visit.

“I pretty much knew, right away, that it was where I wanted to be,” Adams said. “They offered me the scholarship when I was down there, but I gave it a week before I committed.”

Adams, 18, and second-year kicker Seth Sebastian will vie for playing time for the Division I-AA Southland Conference Lions.

“Competition is good for everyone,” Lucas said. “And I’m interested to see how he makes the transition from high school to college.”

Adams, a two-time Greater Catholic League placekicker of the year, is ready to take the next step. The 6-foot-1, 200-pounder set the Carroll school record for longest field goal at 52 yards, a mark he hit twice during the 2010 season while earning the nickname “Thunder Foot” from the Patriots football announcer. He also posted a personal best punt of 64 yards.

“I know it’s going to be a lot more competitive at the college level and a lot faster paced,” Adams said. “It’s also going to be a lot more of a commitment.”

Commitment is something Adams knows a thing or two about. He has spent countless Sundays during the past four years toting his seven footballs to Carroll and kicking field goals for as many as three hours at a time.

Little did Adams know when his seventh grade football coach tried almost everyone on the youth team for a place kicker position that this is where it would lead.

“I knew if I stayed with it, I would improve, but I didn’t know how much better I would be,” Adams said.

That improvement did not come without a lot of work.

“Ryan is naturally talented but he has also trained a lot, at camp after camp, to develop his technique,” Carroll athletic director Jim Kuntz said.

Adams has participated in as many as 40 kicking camps during his high school career from Wisconsin to Florida and many points in between. The camps provided Adams with learning opportunities and exposure and, consequently, interest from several schools. But he ended up as the second choice at both the University of Michigan and Toledo, and the first choice kickers committed.

“It sucks coming that close and not getting anything, but you’ve got to keep going,” Adams said.

Adams did just that and will now start his collegiate career at the Louisiana Superdome, where the Lions will take on Tulane on Sept. 3.

Here's some good news for blockers on extra points and field goals.

New college football rules prohibit defenses on place-kickers to have more than three defensive players gang up on a single blocker.

Similar protections already are in place for the long-snapper on such plays. Kick-block teams will have to rely more on quickness and athleticism than sheer power.

Roger Lalonde / Naples Daily News

MARCO ISLAND, Fla. — The new Marco Island Academy has decided to add football to its sports programs, and it will have a big name heading the coaching staff.

Mike Vanderjagt, former record-setting NFL place-kicker, is the coach.

“I’ve wanted to get into coaching for a couple of years now,” Vanderjagt said. “I talked to Lely (High) and a few other schools, but nothing materialized. Now I can stay on the island and coach, it is the best of both worlds.

Vanderjagt, 41, will coordinate the entire program as it develops. His career field goal accuracy was 86.5 percent.

“There has been a lot of interest and it seems like there is no time like the present to start football as we grow with other sports programs,” said Roger Raymond, the school’s first athletic director.

The CFL’s Toronto Argonauts signed him in 1996, with Vanderjagt being a key in the team winning two straight Grey Cups. In those two championship games he made all nine of his field goal attempts. For his 1996 efforts he was named the game’s most valuable Canadian. He also led the CFL in yardage per punt in 1997.

He played nine seasons in the NFL, for the Indianapolis Colts from 1998-2005 and with the Dallas Cowboys in 2006. He was released in the latter portion of the 2006 season.

He is best known for his stupendous field-goal kicking effort that actually took parts of three seasons. While with the Colts he made good on four field goals at the end of the 2002 season, then went a perfect 37-for-37 in 2003, until his streak ended in the 2004. Few were chippies, with the longest being 51 yards.

Jane Watt, the school’s chairwoman, is thrilled to have Vanderjagt.

“Can you believe it?” she said. “I am so excited that he wants to work with the kids. We are so lucky to have this amazing professional to share his knowledge and talents. Most kids only dream of meeting a professional football player, and to actually be coached by one is amazing.”

Chris Pellant, school principal joins in the enthusiasm.

“I’m really excited about coach Vanderjagt as our head football coach,” he said. “His background as a professional football player adds instant credibility to the program. No one becomes the most accurate kicker in NFL history without having an incredible work ethic and passion for the sport. More importantly, however, is his ability to work well with kids and to be a positive role model for them.”

Vanderjagt owns and operates Vandy’s 5 Brothers Restaurant on the island. He also resides on Marco with wife Janalyn and son Jay.

He has worked with young kids on the island in football, basketball and soccer.

“I like working with that age group,” he said. “I like their innocence of them for one. I want to have a program that includes a lot of fun. Basically, coaching at this age is like an artist’s version of a blank canvass. You can kind of mold them to be a good player because they have no preconceived notions in general about sports.”

Vanderjagt has already talked to possible coaching assistants, all from Marco, he said.

Also on his side is Tony Dungy, former NFL championship coach, who Vanderjagt was under at Indianapolis.

“I plan on taking my staff up to Tampa for a chalk-talk with him,” Vanderjagt said. “He is on my speed dial.”

The school will start out with freshman and sophomore students. Will that be difficult to recruit players who now go to Lely, St. John Neumann, or other off-island schools?

All those involved with the school think that Vanderjagt can have an immediate impact on attracting additional students. Like some of those schools, it can enroll students from all over the county.

“I can tell those who are considering coming here that I will make them into a good football player,” Vanderjagt said. “As for scholarships, Peyton Manning went to a small high school. As we grow we can provide as good an opportunity as anywhere in Southwest Florida.”

First published by Steve Lansdale

Dallas Cowboys kicker David Buehler has one of the most powerful legs in the entire NFL.

But in his second season — his first as the team’s placekicker — he hit just 75 percent (24 of 32) field goals and had the misfortune of missing two (of 44) extra points.

It is widely believed that Buehler will get some competition for the placekicking job after having none for most of camp last season. Whether that’s a veteran or rookie remains to be seen, but ranchreport.com has identified five kickers who are under consideration by the Cowboys, either as potential draft choices or as candidates to be signed as undrafted free agents.

Considering the number of positions that could use an upgrade, it seems unlikely the Cowboys will spend a high draft pick on a kicker, and considering the fact that no more than one or two kickers get drafted every year, it certainly is possible that the team won’t draft another kicker at all. But it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Alex Henery of Nebraska is considered by many to be the best kicker in the nation, and certainly is the best combination kicker and punter. Henery has a cannon of a leg, and not only boasts great accuracy — he hit 193 of 194 extra points and 74 of 80 field goal attempts (92.5 percent) in his career, including 18 of 19 in his senior season … and the one miss was a blocked 51-yarder — but also has a lot of lift, getting the ball up and out of reach of would-be blockers very quickly. Even on long field goals — he connected from 50 or more yards in each of his four seasons as the Cornhuskers’ kicker, including a career-long 57-yarder as a sophomore — the height on his kicks is among the best in the nation. Henery appears an unlikely candidate to challenge Buehler, as he is expected to be the first kicker drafted, maybe in the middle rounds.

If Henery is the top kicking prospect in the draft, Kai Forbath of UCLA is very close behind. Forbath hit 102 of 104 extra points in his career and 85 of 101 career field goal attempts (84.2 percent). He won the Lou Groza Award — given annually to the nation’s best kicker — as a junior and finished as the second-leading scorer in UCLA history with 357 points. Forbath shares two NCAA records after kicking at least two field goals in 27 games and at least three in 13.

The next kicker the Cowboys have studied would walk in to Valley Ranch with a national championship ring: Wes Byrum of Auburn certainly was overshadowed by teammates Cam Newton and Nick Fairley, but it was Byrum who hit the championship-winning field goal in the Tigers’ victory over Oregon. Byrum is another who boasts extraordinary excellence on short kicks — he hit 182 of 183 extra points in his career with the Tigers and 60 of 80 (75 percent) field goals — but doesn’t have quite the power and range that Henery and Forbath do; in two of his four seasons, he failed to hit a field goal from 50 yards. Byrum finished his college career as Auburn’s all-time scoring leader.

Jake Rogers of Cincinnati is a big (6-2, 213) kicker with a big leg. A four-year starter for the Bearcats, Rogers was a shade behind the accuracy of the first three — he converted 181 of 186 extra points and 51 of 75 field goals (68 percent) in his career — but he developed a reputation as a solid kicker in bad weather. Considering the Cowboys play most of their games in excellent conditions — either the warm fall air or indoors if the weather dictates that the roof of Cowboys Stadium is closed — it appears unlikely that Rogers would be the team’s target.

Boise State’s Kyle Brotzman is known best to most college football fans as the guy who famously missed two field goals in the Broncos’ surprising loss to Nevada, the game that quite possibly cost Boise State a chance to play for the national title. Like Rogers, Brotzman played a lot of his college games in cold, sometimes-windy conditions. He converted 238 of 239 career extra points and drilled 67 of 92 career field goals (72.8 percent) — including at least one of 50 yards or more every season (he connected from a career-long 51 yards in his freshman and junior seasons), but Brotzman is viewed as more of a line drive kicker whose kicks don’t get high in the air as some of the other candidates on this list.

Each of these kickers has considerable talent. But there are only 32 teams in the NFL, and many will keep their 2010 kickers, so the chance is good that not even five rookies will find an NFL job next year (or whenever games are next played). But