Just for kicks: Who will Notre Dame football count on for field goals against Georgia Tech?
SOUTH BEND — Notre Dame football placekicker Mitch Jeter, the South Carolina grad transfer, remains questionable with a right hip injury as the 11th-ranked Irish head to Atlanta for a technically neutral-site game against unranked Georgia Tech.
Since going 3-for-3 on field goals in the season-opening win at Texas A&M, Jeter has split four attempts. He had two field goals blocked in the Week 2 loss to Northern Illinois, but Jeter has hit from 42 yards at Purdue and 48 yards against Louisville.
Jeter handled the first point-after kick and one kickoff in Saturday’s win over Stanford before giving way to 30-year-old Army veteran Eric Goins on kickoffs. Junior walk-on Zac Yoakam, the kickoff specialist in 2022, made all five conversion attempts against the Cardinal, while sophomore walk-on Marcello Diomede made the final PAT.
Goins is nearly a decade removed from his two-year stint as the primary kicker at The Citadel, where he went 25-of-35 (71%) on field-goal attempts. His career long is 49 yards on the road at Coastal Carolina, where he added the 43-yard game-winner in an FCS playoff game.
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Jeter has missed just one of 26 career field-goal attempts inside 50 yards, that coming on the first block against Northern Illinois. He is 97-for-100 on point-after conversions.
Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman expressed confidence in the Irish kicking game, regardless of Jeter’s availability.
Asked about kicking range for Yoakam and Diomede, Freeman did not specify.
“That’s to be determined,” he said. “We have an idea of whatever we expect those guys to be able to successfully make the field goal. But we won’t have a competition. We have confidence that whoever we put out there will get the job done; that’s built in practice.”
Yoakam, a 5-foot-8, 191-pound product of Upper Arlington (Ohio) High School, carries a career-long of 57 yards from his prep days. Diomede, 6-foot and 192 pounds, was rated a five-star kicker by Chris Sailer Kicking out of Glenbard West outside Chicago.
His prep range was 55-plus yards.
“There are some really good things that Zac does; there’s some good things that Marcello does,” Freeman said. “We’ll be specific in our game plans in terms of what we ask them to do. We’re going to put them in situations that we expect to put them in on Saturday, and they have to build the confidence in the coach staff by doing it in practice. But I’m really confident that they will.”
Mike Berardino covers Notre Dame football for the South Bend Tribune and NDInsider.com. Follow him on social media @MikeBerardino.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame football mulls contingency kicking plans amid Mitch Jeter injury
