Jordan Stout made his name last season booming long kickoffs out of the county, and he might make his name next season doing just a little bit of everything.
That’s right, in a departure from Penn State’s usual practice under James Franklin, Stout is slated to take care of punting duties, kickoffs, very long field goals and holding in all situations when kicker Jake Pinegar is swinging his leg.
‘It’s kind of a unique situation; thankfully we got Jordan who really is a combo guy,’ special teams coordinator Joe Lorig said on Tuesday. ‘We had all the top guys in the country at our camps, or I went and saw them, depending on the situation and just didn’t feel like there was one that necessarily either we thought was good enough or one that was good enough that fit Penn State.’
And in turn Stout will find himself shouldering quite the load come the season. It’s an interesting situation for a specialists room that has blossomed over the years into one of Penn State’s more reliable units. Conventional wisdom under Franklin has long been to task different kickers with different jobs, giving them the ability to work on one role rather than spread out over three or four. With Stout and Pinegar the most reliable options following the departure of longtime punter Blake Gililkin, that flexibility has decreased considerably.
The good news for the Nittany Lions is two-fold. Stout can probably take care of the jobs on his own plenty fine, and Penn State isn’t looking to do this sort of thing again if it doesn’t have to, a luxury when you have talent to work with.
‘[Stout’s diversity] allowed us not to panic and to be patient and make make great decisions,’ Lorig said of the recruiting trail. ‘There’s some fantastic punters in this year’s class, and in next year’s class that we’ve identified that I think we will be really excited about.’
And that is, as they say, the kicker. While plenty of positions can benefit from depth and options, kicking is not such a place. Most schools offer one or two scholarships to kickers whereas nearly a dozen scholarships could be thrown at any given position. If a defensive tackle doesn’t work out, you’ve got three more. If a kicker doesn’t work out, well, that’s probably tough luck.
The challenge moving forward is the always popular load management issue. Kicking is tougher than it looks, punting is tougher than it looks and one mans leg can only swing so many times during the week or during a game before it gets tired. In total Stout launched 83 kickoffs, while Gillikin booted 62 punts, a total that with any long field goals could nearly double the number of swings Stout takes this upcoming season.
So yes, Franklin and Lorig want Stout sending opening kickoffs 15-rows into the stands like he did in 2019-20, but they also wanting him sending punts 45-yards through the air in the fourth quarter. It’s a delicate balance to get both.
‘It’s really just going to be managing the workload on him,’ Lorig said. ‘Making sure that we’re really conscientious. I’ve reached out to a bunch of people that have been in this situation [and] I’ve used guys for in the past to see. I really kind of put it in baseball terms like what’s the right pitch count per day to make sure that a guy can stay healthy. I’m excited about Jordan. I think he’s gonna do a really, really, really good job.’
