some thoughts

[1987alum]

If a guy cannot consistently kick XPs in practice he's not somebody I want trying to boot a 45 yarder under pressure, but that's just me.

No, it's not just you.

[Falconboy]

About Timchenko as I am of this Goss kid. I saw him miss at least 3 or 4 easy , short extra points or either FG's. Needless to say the kid has alot of work to do over the next year to be worthy of a starting kicker job. Not saying he'll never be up to the job , just not now.

[UK Peregrine]

If you had been to the August 13th scrimmage you would understand why. Timchenko was incredibly inconsistent. He had the leg power to do it, but sometimes it was just brutal. On kickoffs he'd put 2 of 'em down to the goalline or into the endzone, then the next 2 would be shanks rolling out of bounds at the 30.

Same with his FG kicks on the sidelines. One would look great, then another would be something that wouldn't have cleared his OL. When he went into the game he missed an easy FG and missed 2 XPs.

The whole time we were there we thought he was some walkon who had no hope of making the team, because his kicks were so terrible. We were laughing and joking about why he was wasting his time, etc. Then we found out that Timchenko had changed his number and that was him...

For me, anyways, it's not so much worrying about how he'll respond to the pressure, but whether or not he has the ability to gain any consistency period. If a guy cannot consistently kick XPs in practice he's not somebody I want trying to boot a 45 yarder under pressure, but that's just me.

Now I can't believe I'm quoting Allen Iverson, but "we're talking about practice. How silly is that?" Kickers do a lot of crazy things during practice and experiment with many different techniques. s**t, when I played, I could never figure out what in the hell our kickers were doing half the time and our All-State kicker was just downright horrible in practice. Not to mention that he was the worst kicker I had ever seen his freshman and sophomore years. He could't hit PATs and consistently plucked our linemen in their backs, which obviously pissed them off that some little s**t kept hitting them. But when his time came and he saw gametime, he was dead-on accurate. So don't worry about Goss yet either FB and everyone just chill a little on Timchenko. There is no point in getting bent out of shape about the kicking game yet.

I'll tell ya, sometimes I feel like I'm trapped in that skit on MAD TV, you know the "Lowered Expectations" skit. Hi I'm #2144, and our defense is not up to par, the kicking game is no good, and the program is 28 pages to short. I may not look like much, but if you can tolerate all of these shortcomings just give me a call and the season may actually be a success. SERENITY NOW!!!