Penn State football has a kicking problem.
Everybody who watched Saturday’s game against Illinois knows it. Although it’d be unwise for coach James Franklin to use that exact phrasing for reporters, he understands that it hasn’t been good enough.
Penn State dominated Illinois in its 21-7 win Saturday night but didn’t put the game to bed until there were less than two minutes left.
A big reason for this was kicker Sander Sahaydak missing two field goals, each exactly 40 yards. The first field goal Sahaydak missed, which took place in the second quarter, could well have impacted a third-quarter drive that didn’t directly involve him.
Up 14-7 with a little more than a minute left in the third quarter, Penn State faced a 4th and 3 from the Illinois 17. Rather than take the three points that would have out PSU up by two possessions, Franklin kept the offense on the field. Receiver Julian Fleming ended up being tackled short of the sticks, and Penn State turned the ball over on downs.
Penn State’s next possession ended with Sahaydak’s second miss, moving him to 2-for-5 on the season and 3-for-9 in his Penn State career.
When Kaytron Allen’s touchdown run with just under two minutes left iced the game, Ryan Barker kicked the extra point.
Sahaydak has been benched before.
Last season, two missed kicks in Week 1’s win over West Virginia led to him being replaced by Columbia transfer Alex Felkins, who went onto make 19 of 24 kicks (three of his five misses were from 50 yards or longer).
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.Penn State has Barker, who’s in his second season with the program, and Chase Meyer, who made 17 of 20 kicks for Tulsa last season.
Both history and logic suggest that one of those two will be starting at kicker for Penn State Saturday.
But, as expected, Franklin didn’t announce anything during his weekly presser Monday.
“When we’re talking about kicking, it’s not kicking, because we’ve been punting fairly well in particular, and have been kicking off fairly well,” Franklin said. “It’s field goals. But the question was, are we kicking better in practice than we were in the game? Yeah, I mean, obviously we decide who the starter is at every position based on practice.”
Franklin then said than Sahaydak won the job during training camp and in then season.
“All the data and the statistics back that up,” he said. “During the spring it was a closer battle. Then, Sander slowly but surely took the lead. But it was close. I think everybody felt comfortable that that was the right decision.
So, we’ll factor all of that in this week in making the decision. It will be a competition.”
Franklin said that this competition will be decided based on both practice and game performance and that Sahaydak “was the starting kicker for a reason.”
“And up to this point,” he said, “or at least before that, most the data we had was practice data.”
