This time last year, Arizona’s special team unit was in a bit of disarray. The need to replace NFL kicker Tyler Loop was the number one priority, outside of finding a new special teams coordinator.
Brent Brennan brought in Craig Naivar to try and calm the storm, and to a certain extent he did just that. The simple fact that there was a man at the helm was enough to calm the nerves and eventually Arizona found its men for the special teams operations.
However, the short amount of time to try and figure
out things did not do Naivar any favors. It was enough to get Arizona through the season and earn nine wins.
This season, Naivar and his players are appreciating the fact that they know what they need to improve on. For Naivar, he sees the difference between this spring and last spring as two different ways to smoke a meat.
“If you took the analogy of cooking, which I love to do, slow-cooked brisket, it goes for 18 hours at 225 and is a hell of a lot better,” said Naivar. “That one was in the microwave for four minutes, so having the time to prepare it and get it right makes it taste a hell of a lot better.”
There are certain spots on the special teams unit that are more than likely already locked up. One of them being field goal kicker with Michael Salgado-Medina coming back.
Being in a hit or miss business, Salgado-Medina had an up and down season. He finished going 19 for 31 on field goal attempts and went 47 for 48 on extra points.
While he made more field goals than he missed, the misses felt like monumental misses. Fortunately, he always did enough to not cost Arizona a win.
However, he did receive a lot of social media criticism. That did not bother Salgado-Medina in the slightest, because he found a way to tune out the noise.
“Just try to treat every kick as the same,” he said. “Don’t make it more than what it is.”
While the end result does come down to the kicker, what goes into the operation takes a process. So even though the outside noise points to the kicker, Naivar knows that sometimes it’s the process that causes misses.
“It’s a snap, to the hold, to the kick and everything with that,” said Naivar. “I feel a lot better with the timing. We have to build a ramp up to get that to where it needs to be for the season. It’s already better than it was.”
The field goal unit will continue to fine tune its operations, but the punting unit is in the middle of a search for a new punter. Isaac Lovison was last year’s punter and with his eligibility running out, it looks like freshman punter Chase Ridley is starting to make his case for the spot.
Coming from Prokick Australia, Ridley grew up playing in the Australian Football League (AFL), so the transition from that to American football was not hard for him. It just came down to the small details of techniques.
“Everything about it is just kicking at the end of the day, but there’s a lot of technical aspects to it,” said Ridley. “Trying to learn the technique, the steps, the mold of the ball, especially the hang time and distance, it’s a big thing.”
There are still habits that he has to let go, and that’s exactly what the spring is for. Being able to break old habits and perfect new ones is what the main goal of spring needs to be.
“We bring the ball down to our foot, which is something you shouldn’t really do when it comes to punts,” he said. “You should just keep it out there and let the ball do its thing.”
The kickoff specialist still needs to be figured out, but for now the punting and field goal units know who they will go to. When it comes to returners, Luke Wysong took on punt returns and a combination of Javin Whatley and Ismail Mahdi.
Rodney Gallagher III has been a constant name when it comes to returners on special teams. His willingness to learn and do anything is what is setting him apart.
“He’s tough, he’ll stick his face in the fan, he will give tremendous effort, and he wants to,” said Naivar. “He understands he’s an older player, so he understands, if I want to do this for a living, this is something I have to excel at.”
Fine tuning is the name of the game for the special teams unit this spring. This will lead to a hopefully near perfect operation when training camp begins in the fall.
