The best of Iowa's special teams last season could have been packaged in a highlight film filled with soaring punts, blocked kicks and timely field goals.
The worst of the Hawkeye kicking game could have produced a series of bloopers packed with errant punts sending spectators scattering for cover, return men getting buried by tacklers and extra-point tries that kept everyone dressed in black and gold on edge.
The kicking game has been many things to Iowa football during Kirk Ferentz's nine seasons as coach -- the source of the first touchdown of the Ferentz era in 1999, the key to his first Big Ten victory in 2000, the soft spot that dropped the Hawkeyes to the Alamo Bowl in 2001 and rescued them once they arrived there. Sparkling special teams were a staple of Iowa's glorious three-year run beginning in 2002, and they became a hindrance to the Hawkeyes in 2006.
But perhaps never before under Ferentz was Iowa's kicking game been as wildly unpredictable as it was last season. Special teams were an asset for the Hawkeyes one minute and a liability the next.
• Symbolic of the season, the Hawkeyes wrapped up the year with perhaps their most erratic performance of the year in the kicking game. Iowa blocked two field goals against Western Michigan, and freshman Ryan Donahue had punts of 54 and 49 yards. But the Hawkeyes bungled four kickoff returns, including a fumble that set the Broncos up in Iowa territory, and missed an extra-point try in a 28-19 defeat.
• Donahue capped his freshman season with bombs of 82, 76 and 68 yards during the final four games after shanking shots of 12, 14 and 8 yards early in the year.
"Any little glitch can inhibit your punt -- from your steps to your drop, just everything,"
he said. "Every game (early in the season), I seemed to have some little glitch going on, and it was frustrating. But I think I got that all worked out."
• Daniel Murray assumed place-kicking duties during the Big Ten opener at Wisconsin. Pressed into a pivotal role for the first time in his career with the Hawkeyes -- under less-than-ideal circumstances for breaking into the league -- the Regina graduate made a pair of field goals in pressure-packed situations with a sellout crowd and national audience looking on.
The following week in front of the home crowd, Murray missed a 25-yard try when Iowa desperately needed points to erase a 21-0 deficit against Indiana.
"Daniel Murray showed me an awful lot up at Wisconsin last year,"
Ferentz said. "Consistency wise, we haven't seen it and didn't see it in the spring. But to do what he did up there -- and nobody said much about it (because) we lost the game -- he really showed me some substance."
Consistency is the catchphrase for Iowa on special teams this season.
The Hawkeyes will gladly take the 82-yard bombs from Donahue, but they would rather not see any more of the 8-yard duds. They aren't counting on their kicker to be the next Nate Kaeding, but they would like to make extra-point tries and field goals from 40 and in look like a relatively routine act again. They don't need to see every game start with the flair of a kickoff return for a touchdown like the 2003 Orange Bowl, but they would like to get favorable field position out of the unit more often.
"Our kickoff return, it hasn't helped us at all, it seems like since 2002,"
Ferentz said. "I know I'm exaggerating, but we need to get that back. That's an important thing."
So is the overall performance of the special teams for a squad that doesn't have a high-octane offense or an airtight defense. The Hawkeyes can't afford to be average in the kicking game if they plan to play past Thanksgiving.
Donahue's second-half surge is a good starting point. He averaged 36.9 yards per punt during the first five games and upped that figured to 43.6 during the last seven weeks. He said he shook his nerves in October and started focusing on technique "and not everything else going on around the stadium."
"The second half was pretty fun,"
he said. "Really, I wasn't even kicking the ball that hard. I wasn't trying to kick it that hard, I was just using my technique and the ball started to fly. Once I got consistent with it, everything improved."
Murray converted 7-of-10 field-goal tries and 16-of-18 of his extra-point opportunities while sharing the kicking job with Austin Signor, who transferred to Eastern Illinois during the offseason. Murray will have more competition with the arrival of freshman Trent Mossbrucker.
"I look at it like if you're the best on the team, you're the best on the team, but I think it's about being the best in the country,"
Murray said. "It's not about going out and making 60 or 70 percent of your kicks, it's about making 90 to 100 percent. That's the main thing I've tried to work on -- being as consistent as possible and developing the same routine every time."
