If you were reading practice reports for the last week, you might draw one conclusion from the punter competition as to who the leader was ...
- From what I could tell, Grossnickle and O'Neill punted better this morning. So good chance Brundage will be cut from the competition.
- Sophomore Zach Grossnickle and freshman walk-on Darragh O'Neill appeared to out-punt Mark Brundage, a walk-on transfer from Rice, during the competition. If the competition for punter was based solely on today, he would win the job easily.
- grossnickel then boomed all of his punts. Distance, height, spiral, turning the punt over. He was by far the best. He has a freakin leg.
- I have been paying careful attention to the punting competition throughout camp, and it seemed clear to me that Grossnickle was consistently better than the other two. He averaged a better hang time4.5 to 4.6 seconds compared with 4.1 to 4.3 and he was usually longer.
- Grossnickle's punts were averaging about 4.6 seconds of hang time, versus 4.1 for O'Neill and Brundage.
But if you depended on first-hand practice reports to predict a final two punters, you'd be wrong.
According to the official CUBuffs.com website, Embree decided to "go with a gut feeling" and named newcomers Darragh O'Neill and Mark Brundage the finalists for the starting position. Brundage played a half-season at Rice with pretty decent stats; O'Neill has never played football.
The last time a head coach said something similar about kicking, it was "he who shall not be named" stating that he just had a "gut feelling" that Goodman would have a good day.