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Is There a Kicker Competition in West Lafayette?


For several seasons the Boilermakers had some stability at kicker thanks to the successful career of Carson Wiggs. Of course all of that came crashing down in 2012 as the graduation of Wiggs led to Danny Hope going back and forth between Paul Griggs and walk-on Sam McCartney. Griggs eventually won out the competition but was relatively lacking, hitting on 4 of his 7 field goal attempts and missing two of his 18 extra point attempts. The inconsistency shown by Griggs reared it's ugly head once again in 2013, only hitting 50% of his 12 field goals and missing an extra point even with only 22 attempts.

The issue with Griggs has always been inconsistency. As if his inability to consistently hit field goals during gameday wasn't troubling enough, it's something commonly seen in practice as well. The reality is Griggs has a pretty strong leg and can hit from beyond 50 yards, giving him a big leg up on most of the other guys that have tried to steal the position away from him. The problem is until Griggs can hit at a consistent rate he's nothing but a liability for a team that needs to not squander scoring opportunities.

The turmoil at kicker will mean walk-on senior transfer Ian MacDougall will have a shot for the starting role. MacDougall's career at Wabash definitely didn't start off pretty thanks to hitting only 70 of his 82 extra points in his first two seasons, while only hitting on 11 of 21 field goal attempts. He did manage to play better in 2013, though, converting on 15 of his 17 kicks, with a long of 45 yards. 

So where does that leave us? Well it looks like Griggs and MacDougall have been rotating throughout fall camp and getting equal amounts of reps. While Griggs has been the starter the last two seasons he'll have to earn the spot if he wants to keep it for another year. Ultimately I have a feeling Griggs will either hold on or this could be a 'Griggs vs. McCartney' round two, but I'm sure that'll be decided by the end of the month. 

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