Perhaps the most dramatic difference in special teams philosophy that first-year coordinator Brian Mason brings to Notre Dame football from previous regimes is how aggressively the Irish will try to block punts.
“I feel great about our personnel,” he said Friday after ND’s 15th training camp practice.
And head coach Marcus Freeman feels great about Mason’s track record of pressuring opposing punters when the two worked together at the University of Cincinnati.
UC in the four seasons (2018-21) that Mason presided over its special teams, blocked nine punts and 14 kicks, including a nation’s-best six of the latter in 2021, tied with Houston and Old Dominion.
The Bearcats’ total of 23 total blocks is 15 more than the Irish accomplished (four punt blocks, four blocked kicks) over the same time span under Brian Kelly/Brian Polian, now both at LSU.
“We’re gonna play defense and just run pressures and be aggressive and try to affect the punter,” Mason said. “And once the punter’s getting rid of the ball really fast and we’ve affected him, we’ll go into different looks and different hold-ups and things like that, like most people would do.
“But the No. 1 goal is to affect the punter, just like you want to affect the quarterback. The faster we can make him get rid of the ball, the higher probability he shanks it, the higher probability there’s less hangtime, and we can get more return yards.
“And punters don’t handle pressure that well, because most teams don’t pressure.”
Mason is just about through his preseason special teams checklist, with determining who will handle onside kicks and who will be on the “hands team” dealing with opposing onside kicks as the final couple of tasks.
The No. 1 place-kicker (Arkansas State transfer Blake Grupe), punter (Harvard transfer Jon Sot), holder (Sot) and kickoff man (freshman punter Bryce McFerson) have all locked down specialist positions that were open after last season.
“It took about five minutes,” Mason said of McFerson’s claim on the kickoffs job. “Some of those guys, you just know.”
Grad senior Michael “Milk” Vinson at long snapper is the only incumbent among the specialists. The former walk-on is in his third year as a starter.
ND didn’t make the top 30 nationally in 2021 in any team special teams statistical category. Cincinnati, under Mason, was in the top 30 in all seven of them: Punt returns (29th), punt coverage (3rd), kickoff returns (25th), kickoff coverage (24th), net punting (22nd), blocked punts (7th) and blocked kicks (1st).
The Return Game
Northwestern transfer Brandon Joseph, a starting safety for the Irish and a former All-American with the Wildcats, edged out wide receiver Matt Salerno for the punt returner job, though Mason said he’s confident enough to use either in a game.
Joseph figures to be more dynamic in actually returning punts, but he’s shown to be every bit as adept when it comes to ball security as Salerno, the latter of whom has a rep for fair-catching punts.
In fact, Joseph routinely practices catching punts in practice, per Mason, with a ball already in his hands.
“We’ve had competitions to see how many balls you can catch at one time and then try to work on ball security,” Mason said. “Some NFL guys were doing it, and Brandon wants to beat the NFL guys and compete with it, so he’s just having fun with it.
“He’s good. He can catch six at one time.”
Junior Chris Tyree will return kickoffs again, after averaging 26.7 yards on 13 returns with a TD in 2021. Braden Lenzy, Lorenzo Styles and Gi’Bran Payne will rotate as the off returner.
“We don’t have as much depth at certain offensive skill positions, as we all know, so … that’s really just gonna depend on where we’re at in the game.”
Coverage Teams
Freeman gave Mason the run of the roster in choosing coverage personnel, but both want to be smart about how much Mason uses starters — particularly at positions of tenuous depth.
“As a special teams coach, who wouldn’t want to play all the best players?” Mason said. “But we’ve gotta be smart on how we use certain guys. There’s gonna be certain guys that have a huge role on offense or defense that maybe are on one or two different special teams.
“If it’s a position that we don’t have great depth at, they might be on one specials team (or) they might be on no special teams, based on the depth of that position.
“There are positions — line, linebackers and safeties — (where) we have a really experienced, older group and a lot of depth. Some of those guys are gonna be on two to three special teams, because we’re rotating them on defense. So, that’s really dependent on the position and the situation.”
Picking coverage players is very different, Mason said, for punts versus kickoffs.
“On kickoffs, we’re gonna be almost all defensive players. There’s gonna be a mixture of older and younger guys. We’ll be able to rotate and mix some of those guys in there.
“On punt coverage, we’re looking for the most dependable guys on the football team. It’s the most important play in football, where you impact the most field position (both) positively and negatively.
“Usually, gunner-wise, you’re looking for your best wide receivers, because they’re guys that are beating press coverage. We’ll use some DBs there as well. That could just depend on where we’re at in the game and whose legs are fresh as well.”
Two freshmen who have stood out and earned special teams roles are linebacker Junior Tuihalamaka and cornerback Jaden Mickey.
“We have a really number of talented freshman, (but) those two are more mature beyond their years than most other guys,” Mason said. “They’ve handled taking on a lot of information, processing that information (and) making good game decisions and just kind of being ahead, from a maturity and leadership standpoint, than most people are when they’re 18 years old.”
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