2022 Boston College Football Preview: Special Teams

We’re moving right along with our season previews for the 2022 Boston College Football season, and next up we’ll take a look at the BC kicking units.

KICKING

After years and years of inconsistency on field goals and extra points, Boston College finally got some real stability at the position last year thanks to true freshman Connor Lytton. The young man with the golden toe has been pretty much everything you could ask for, giving BC both accuracy and distance off his right foot all year. He was a perfect 25 for 25 on extra points and went 11 for 12 on field goals, which when combined with Danny Longman’s 2 for 2 put the Eagles at #1 in the ACC (!) in percentage of field goals made.

Longman returns as a graduate student and should continue to handle kickoff duties. He’s done a decent enough job, placing the Eagles middle-of-the-pack in the ACC in terms of net yards per kickoff, but BC’s 21 touchbacks were only 2nd in the conference. You’d really like to see the young man get some more berries into his kickoffs to eliminate more of our opponents’ return opportunities.

Behind the two returning kickers are two freshmen who will likely provide some depth behind the returning starters. Liam Connor and Mika Montonen both put up admirable stats in high school, and you’d think they’d be able to step in just fine if needed.

PUNTING

Punter Grant Carlson has graduated, dramatically reducing the number of Grants per capita on the Heights and leaving just Earl Grant and myself as the two biggest name Grants to be associated with BC for the coming season. In Carlson’s place, the Eagles bring in Australian Sam Candotti as freshman punter. The Niddrie, Victoria native is rated as the #5 punter in the 2022 class and is a product of ProKick Australia, which was launched to help Aussies who play rugby and AFL transition toward American football kicking. Australian kickers are becoming all the rage these days — according to 247 Sports, a whopping 10 out of the top 15 punters this year are products of ProKick Australia.

Carlson had put the Eagles right around the middle of the pack in the ACC in terms of most of the punting stats (5th in yards per punt, 9th in net yards per punt), and you certainly wouldn’t say that the position ever felt like a liability under the senior. Still, it’ll be interesting to see if Candotti can improve on those stats as a freshman to pin BC’s opponents deep.