As the LSU offense and defense made drastic improvements between their Wisconsin loss and Jacksonville State win, one player’s improvement has slipped by nearly unnoticed.
Yup. Get ready for a punting column.
Redshirt freshman punter Josh Growden was coming off a debut that he would probably like to forget. Against Wisconsin, he punted seven times for 227 yards ­­— an average of 32.4 yards per punt. Growden did have two punts downed inside Wisconsin’s 20-yard line, though the punts were only 30 and 36 yards long.
The punting performance was dreadful, but the timing was even worse.
LSU’s offense went three-and-out three times out of the team’s 12 total drives. Two of those three-and-outs were capped off by sub-30-yard punts — one for 23 yards to the Wisconsin 40 and another for 25 yards to the Wisconsin 42.
Though the LSU defense held on fourth down following the 23-yarder in the first quarter against the Badgers, the 25-yard punt in the third led to a five-play 58-yard touchdown drive that took less than two minutes.
Obviously, the punting unit can’t be blamed for the three-and-outs, but it does little to help a defense spending too much time on the field.
Fast-forward to Jacksonville State. Growden, a Sydney, Australia, native knocked four punts for a total of 163 yards per punt. He also nailed a 46-yarder after a three-and-out that placed the Gamecocks on their own 16 yard-line.
Without question, Growden improved. If he continues to improve, this could very well be the most well-rounded special teams unit LSU has seen in quite a while.
It’s fair to point out that Growden, particularly in his Jacksonville State performance, has not been as bad as fans have perceived. In all fairness to Growden, LSU has been spoiled by some pretty special punters.
Since 2004, only two LSU starting punters have not averaged more than 40 yards per punt. In 2004, Chris Jackson averaged an exact 40 yards per punt during his sophomore campaign, but improved to 41.5 and 41.7 in his junior and senior seasons, respectively.
Derek Helton posted a 40-yard average during his junior season in 2009, but he followed that with a stellar senior campaign. In 2010, Helton averaged 45.7 yards per punt and hit 14 inside the 20.
For every average LSU punter in that span, there has been an incredible one. Brad Wing, the patriarch of LSU’s Aussie line, was remarkably consistent in his two years as the Tigers’ punter. He hit 59 punts in both 2011 and 2012, though his greater average distance came during the 2012 season, when he averaged 44.8 yards and pinned 21 inside the 20-yard line.
Last year’s punter, Jamie Keehn, was nothing to laugh at, either. Though his numbers dropped during his senior season in 2015, his junior campaign topped Brad Wing’s 2012 average at 44.9 yards per punt. He also pinned teams inside the 20 on 27 occasions.
Growden may never be a Brad Wing or match Keehn’s 2014 numbers, but he should end up as a passable punter if he continues to improve at this rate. And he’ll need to continue that improvement into this weekend, as the Tigers face off against a Mississippi State defense that only allows teams to convert on third down 35.5 percent of the time.
If he doesn’t, the defense should prepare to spend a lot of time in its own territory.