How new assistant coach Jay Boulware plans to fix Kentucky football’s special teams
Somewhat lost in Kentucky football’s inability to score any points in the Music City Bowl loss to Iowa was the continuation of another worrying trend for the 2022 Wildcats.
Iowa’s average starting field position in the game was its own 35-yard line. The Hawkeyes’ lone touchdown drive started at the Kentucky 42-yard line after a poor punt from Wildcats punter Wilson Berry from the shadow of his own end zone.
Iowa All-America punter Tory Taylor consistently flipped the field by averaging 48.3 yards per punt. Six of his eight punts were downed inside the Kentucky 20-yard line. Three went for more than 50 yards.
Meanwhile one of Berry’s best punts of the day, a 40-yarder that was fielded at the Iowa 6-yard line, was returned 34 yards to near midfield due to poor coverage from the Wildcats’ punt team. UK punter returner Tayvion Robinson was unable to counter Taylor’s booming kicks, letting at least one punt bounce deeper into Kentucky territory when he could have fielded it.
On a day where points were expected to be at a premium, Kentucky could ill-afford to lose the field-position battle, but season-long special teams blunders showed up again, doing an undermanned Kentucky offense no favors.
“We have to turn the table there,” UK Coach Mark Stoops said after the 21-0 loss. “You know, there were games this year where we won the hidden yards in the core four (special teams), but not enough. And there were certainly games that it impacted it in a negative way.
“I had to address it, and I did.”
Stoops addressed the special teams blunders by replacing running backs coach and co-special teams coordinator John Settle with former Iowa State, Auburn, Oklahoma and Texas special teams coordinator Jay Boulware.
After joining Kentucky’s staff in December, Boulware focused his efforts on the recruiting trail and did not coach in the bowl game. There is more recruiting work to do in advance of the traditional February signing period, but Boulware can now begin focusing his attention on overhauling the Wildcats’ special teams units as well.
“That’s why he brought me in here: I coach all of that,” Boulware said at his introductory news conference. “I coach our snappers, I coach our punters, I coach our kickers as well as the core. So, I have a regimen that I go through. You can just look at the history.”
During Boulware’s seven seasons at Oklahoma, his special teams units accounted for 10 touchdowns, one safety and three returned two-point attempts. At Oklahoma, Boulware coached 2018 Special Teams Player of the Year Austin Seibert, a kicker who was drafted in the fifth round by the Cleveland Browns, and 2019 Lou Groza Award semifinalist Gabe Brkic.
At Auburn, Boulware coached 2021 Pro Bowl long snapper Josh Harris and Las Vegas Raiders kicker Daniel Carlson.
“I’m well aware how to go about getting the things accomplished that we’re looking for and also bringing a presence in the room that guys can look to and understand this is who’s coaching that,” Boulware said.
Boulware inherits one of the best kickoff returners in the country in wide receiver Barion Brown, but the rest of Kentucky’s special teams personnel may look significantly different next year than it did in 2022.
Robinson, the primary punt returner, and Chance Poore, the holder and kickoff specialist, must decide whether to use their pandemic seasons of eligibility to return to UK. Kicker Matt Ruffolo and punter Colin Goodfellow will need to be replaced after exhausting their eligibility. Walk-on long snappers Cade DeGraw and Clay Perry have eligibility remaining but struggled at key moments in 2022.
Berry, a former professional Australian Rules Football player, filled in at punter after Goodfellow’s season-ending injury in early November but has battled inconsistency and injuries in two years as a Wildcat. It is also unclear if Boulware will favor the Australian rugby-style punting used by Kentucky in recent years.
Poore or freshman Jackson Smith will probably compete to replace Ruffolo as the primary place-kicker, but the fact that neither could unseat Ruffolo despite him converting just 16 of 24 field goals this season adds worry for the future.
Personnel changes alone are unlikely to fix Kentucky’s special teams miscues. Boulware will need to bring new schematic wrinkles as well.
But perhaps most importantly is the message his hiring sends to the locker room about the importance of special teams moving forward.
“If you want to be a better player, if you want to have a chance to get to the NFL and make the roster, you have to start honing in on your fundamentals and techniques on special teams,” said Boulware, who spent the 2021 season as an offensive intern with the Pittsburgh Steelers. “... I’ve got another position, but I’m a full-time special teams guy, too. I can take that load. I’ve been handling that load for quite some time.”
Stoops has declined to place one of his 10 full-time assistant coaches in charge of all the special teams units in the last three seasons. In 2020, no coach held the special teams coordinator title. In 2021 and 2022, Settle and safeties coach Frank Buffano were named co-special teams coordinators.
In reality, quality control coach Louie Matsakis, a former college punter and kicker, has been the primary leader of the special teams units, but when no full-time assistant is in charge of special teams and those units struggle the staff organization makes for an easy target for fan criticism.
That was the case in 2015 when Kentucky played a season without a dedicated special teams coordinator, too. Stoops responded to criticism of the special teams units that year by hiring Dean Hood as coordinator in 2016. Among Hood’s special teams successes was establishing the Australian punter pipeline that landed Kentucky 2019 Ray Guy Award winner Max Duffy.
Since Hood left UK for the head coaching position at Murray State, the Wildcats’ special teams have come under fire again.
Whether Boulware can duplicate Hood’s success will say much about Kentucky’s success in 2023.
“I know an important ingredient to winning championships is playing great defense,” Boulware said. “That’s something that we’ve done here. The other important ingredient to that is playing great special teams. That’s what I want to bring to this university.”