Lot of people poking at Brian Johnson with the announcement that Jordan Stout may be leaving. It seemed to me that Johnson was pretty consistent at shorter distances last year, so I went back and looked at game logs.

Here were the distances of Johnson's made field goals:
29, 31, 45, 28, 39, 43, 22, 31, 42, 32, 32, 28

Here were the distance of Johnson's misses:
47, 52, 46, 40, 46

Basically, under 40 yards he made 100% of his field goals. At 40+, he typically missed.

I'm sure that the coaches would rather that he made more of the longer field goals, but it's also pretty comforting to know that when you get inside a range that you have a very high chance of getting the points.

It's interesting that the one field goal they used Stout for this year was the 43 yarder at the beginning of the UVA game. That field goal was really important and Johnson typically misses from that range. Stout missed that field goal and I think everybody assumed they switched back to Johnson because of the miss, but maybe not. The next field goal opportunity in the game was a 31 yarder, a range where Johnson consistently makes. If I'm the VT coaches in the rivalry game against UVA, I have Johnson kick the field goal that he makes 100% of the time.

The coaches aren't stupid. I have to assume that if Stout was a clearly superior field goal kicker that he would have gotten the field goal slot and maybe the scholarship. It seems that Stout has a very strong leg, but don't know (and we don't know) how consistent he is. Kicking hard doesn't necessarily mean kicking accurately.

Sucks to lose Stout's almost guaranteed touchbacks. Unless something changes in the offseason, Johnson doesn't seem to have the leg for long field goals or kickoff touchbacks.

Maybe Quick (the redshirt freshman) takes kickoff duties in 2019. It looks like he had a lot of touchbacks and some long field goals in high school.



[Post edited by BirdHerd at 04/22/2019 4:43PM]