OXFORD, Miss. — If there was one area of Ole Miss’ team that didn’t cause me a second of concern this season it was Lucas Carneiro kicking the ball.
Primarily because so many games by SEC teams these days comes down to the end, I even said before the opener against Louisville that Carneiro was going to be the difference in a close win. Turns out as I was right.
All was rolling along before going to Florida. The Rebels’ wagon ended up in the ditch.
Kickoffs became a big part of the story. Apparently Ben Garrett over at OMSpirit.com saw the same thing except he had a little more information than I did.
As things turned out, Ole Miss’ kicker has something going on physically with the foot. The report says it wasn’t pain but something that made things a little uncomfortable.
That’s huge for kickers. Something being a little “off” will throw their entire focus off and all sorts of things are the result. They want to focus on the snap and hold getting the ball exactly where they expect it to be. Every single time and they don’t want to think about that.
Have some little issue going on with a crucial part of their body and it gets into their head. That’s not good because being one at a time in my life, kickers can be really different. It’s probably a psychological dream study.
Everybody in the stadium and watching on TV saw the problem, but nobody could tell why the kickoffs were falling so short against the Gators.
That includes Rebels coach Pete Golding.
“I don’t think he was hitting the ball real clean on the kickoff,” Golding said at his Monday press conference. “It didn’t seem like it. I’ve got to watch the tape on that part.”
Combine the Gators winning the field position battle big on nearly every single possession of the second half with the defensive breakdowns, it comes into focus.
Yes, Trinidad Chambliss and Ole Miss kept up in the first half. They got behind a couple of scores and that started the snowball rolling downhill.
It got faster before the Rebels could figure out how to stop it.
Now everybody gets a week off to think about it and Carneiro’s issues don’t sound like something that can corrected with coaching. Exactly what’s going on isn’t known yet.
The guess (and probably hope) it is something that fixes itself quickly.
If it doesn’t, things could go from bad to worse quickly.
