9 Days Until Spring Practice: Field Goal Kicking

Before the season begins, everybody gets wrapped up in such things as quarterback play, running back rotations, defensive line depth, or replacing that star middle linebacker.  Field goal kicking rarely gets discussed.  Today, we’ll do exactly that.

In the early years of the ACC era, Virginia Tech was spoiled by a run of terrific kickers.  That came crashing down in 2013 with Cody Journell’s struggles and ultimate dismissal from the football program.

Let’s take a look at Tech’s field goal kicking on a year by year basis.  We’ll take it back to 2007, which is as far back as FootballOutsiders.com’s special teams efficiency stats go.  Let’s see where each team ranked in field goal kicking, as well as get a quick recap of the primary kicker(s).

2007: #31.  Jud Dunlevy was a very impressive 21-of-26 in 2007.  In fact, he was 14-of-15 from inside 40 yards, which is outstanding.  Tech’s offense struggled that year, but it helped to know that if they got the ball in the redzone they were automatically going to come away with points.

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