The art of punting is always overlooked when previewing a game. It will be important for Clemson football as they take on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
Punting hasn’t really mattered much for Clemson football during the 2018 season.
The Tigers, for the most part, have pretty much just dominated their opponents and played out each game working on what they needed to get done to develop their team.
One area that has been very inconsistent, but not talked about a lot is the punting.
Fans complain about it in games, but then forget after the win. While punting hasn’t been a key for Clemson so far this season, it will be an important aspect of the game against Notre Dame and in the College Football Playoff, should the Tigers advance to the National Championship.
Field Position Matters…
If you remember the Alabama-Clemson game from a year ago, one thing that should stand out to you is the dominant field position that Alabama was able to garner.
The Crimson Tide didn’t really score on the Tigers. They had 24 total points in the game 14 of those points came off of offensive turnovers. What Alabama did do, though, was keep Clemson in bad field position.
The Tigers weren’t able to have many drives where they started with a favorable field to work with. Part of that was the art of punting orchestrated by Alabama.
I’m not saying that this Clemson-Notre Dame game is going to be similar in scoring to that game a year ago, but the Tigers can certainly take into account the importance of field position.
Now, good field position doesn’t just happen through punting. It also happens when the defense gets a stop in deep opponent territory. It happens when the offense can put a few plays together and drive the ball down the field.
While it’s not a sexy part of the game, it will be important that Clemson wins the field position battles and doesn’t give Notre Dame short fields to work with or allow the Irish to continuously have favorable punting conditions to pin the Tigers deep.
Will Spiers is going to need to have a good game when he’s called upon. In a College Football Playoff game, the difference between a win and a loss can be field position. It can be separated just by a bad punt. Spiers needs to be confident in his leg and come out and get the job done.