Alan is correctNugent prepares for tougher job in NFL
Using new balls to kick means far less distance
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Ken Gordon
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
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Six months later, what Mike Nugent remembers most about the Marshall game is the feel of the ball off his foot.
Forget the drama of his last-second field goal that enabled Ohio State to pull out a 24-21 win on Sept. 11, or the fact his kick traveled 55 yards.
Instead, it was the soft-but-solid feel of the kick that gets him almost misty-eyed. Anyone who has ever smacked the sweet spot on a golf ball can relate.
"An old, beat-up ball sails farther," Nugent said. "The way it hits off your feet, the impact is just more solid. The Marshall game, that ball was one of the best balls I ever hit. Right when I hit it, I was like, ‘I crushed that ball.’ "
He sounded a bit wistful, and with good reason. Poised on the brink of the NFL, Nugent might never get to kick a ball like that again.
In college, balls can be kicked for weeks or months on end, eventually creating "cherries" — as broken-in balls are called. There’s a generous amount of give.
But since 1999 the NFL uses brandnew balls for the kicking game. Before each game, a box of 12 Wilsons, straight from the factory, are opened and marked with a "K."
Before a punt, kickoff, extra-point or field-goal attempt, a "K ball" is put into play. And there is a significant difference.
"A new ball is not as pliable. It doesn’t compress as much as one that has been worked in," said Darren Simmons, the Cincinnati Bengals’ specialteams coach. "They’re hard and slick."
Nugent knows. Since the week after OSU’s season ended in the Alamo Bowl, he has been kicking exclusively with new balls shipped to him by his agent, Ken Harris.
If the Lou Groza Award winner is going to succeed at the next level, he will have to get used to K balls.
"It just doesn’t feel as good as the older one," Nugent said. "The way it goes off your foot is just a little bit different."
And that affects distance. Nugent knows he will not be booting 70 percent of his kickoffs into the end zone, like he did last season.
Also, the yard line for NFL kickoffs is the 30, as opposed to the 35 in college.
Nugent had a week to practice in front of NFL scouts at the Senior Bowl in January and thought he performed well. Still, it took some mental adjustment.
"You feel like you crushed it, you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s in the end zone,’ and it will go to the 5," he said. "But that’s what (the NFL) is looking for. They won’t hold it against you if you don’t get a lot of (touchbacks)."
Simmons said he looks for a hang time of at least four seconds and a ball that lands somewhere inside the 5-yard line. He said NFL kickers average about six or seven touchbacks a season.
Nugent’s next chance to audition is the NFL combine, which begins Feb. 23 in Indianapolis.
He is the highest-rated kicker in the draft, but it’s hard to tell what that means. In recent seasons, the top-rated kicker has been drafted in about the third or fourth round.
Since 1990, only one kicker has been taken in the first round: Sebastian Janikowski by the Oakland Raiders, 17 th overall in 2000.
"Teams might feel a little pain in their gut to go so high to draft a kicker," said Harris, Nugent’s agent. "But what they don’t realize yet is he is going to make some NFL coach sleep much better at night for about the next 15 years."
Nugent will have to be good. Last year, NFL kickers connected on 81.1 percent of their field-goal tries, including 58.2 percent from 50 yards or longer.
Simmons said Nugent is smart to be working out with K balls. He has seen lots of top college kickers struggle with the adjustment.
"It’s inevitable that every year at the combine, there’s a guy who’s supposed to be ‘the guy,’ " Simmons said. "But I can count the number of touchbacks on one hand in seven years I’ve been there. They think it’s automatic, no big deal. But the balls are so different. It separates strong guys from the mediocre guys."
It’s mental as much as anything, and that bodes well for Nugent. He has never fit the stereotype of the flaky, quirky kicker, one who’s easily rattled.
Faced with a harder ball, he shrugs and looks forward to the day when his 55-yard field goal might beat the Miami Dolphins instead of Marshall. "At the beginning, I was like, ‘Gosh, too bad this ball is not going as far,’ " he said. "But then you totally get used to it, and then it’s back to normal from there."
From the Dispatch, Feb. 13, 05
