LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) -Mark Mangino finally gave up and that’s not something he often does.
No matter what the Kansas coach says, he cannot stop plucky kicker Jacob Branstetter from running full speed down the field and hurling his valuable, undersized body into ball carriers.
Kicker is a position where the No. 16 Jayhawks (4-0) are perilously thin heading into a game against Iowa State. Yet there’s Branstetter almost every week acting as though the season will be lost if he doesn’t personally take down whoever fields his kickoffs.
“Its just a natural thing,” said the 5-foot-10, 180-pound junior. “If I hit the ball well, maybe sometimes I kind of jog down there thinking, ‘OK, that’s a good kick. We’re going to go down there and make the tackle.’ If I didn’t hit it quite as well as I want, I feel like I have to make it up to the team, get in there and hit somebody. I don’t really think about it.”
Then he adds with a grin, “I like to hit.”
kicker’s enthusiasm.
“We always tell him before every kickoff where we want to go with it,” Mangino said. “If he doesn’t put it exactly where we wanted it, then he feels like he’s got to go down and make the tackle himself.”
The instructions are for the kicker to hang back, wait for the play to develop, and be the last line of defense.
“But he’s like, ‘Here I am to save the day,”’ Mangino said with a smile and an air of resignation.
Although he didn’t say so, Mangino is just like Branstetter’s teammates. They respect their kicker’s spunk.
“You’ve got to admire somebody who’s as crazy as he is,” safety Darrell Stuckey said. “A guy that goes against the grain and does something he doesn’t have to do, isn’t supposed to do, won’t get cursed out if he doesn’t do, but he’s willing and able to make the play – and with his size. He’s not a very big guy at all. But he’s fearless.”
Branstetter’s ferocity helped save the biggest victory the Jayhawks had last season, the 40-37 win over archrival Missouri in the regular-season finale. Todd Reesing threw the go-ahead touchdown pass to Kerry Meier with 27 seconds left, then Branstetter kicked off.
out of bounds.
A few seconds later, the Tigers had a 54-yard field goal blocked. If Branstetter hadn’t gotten Maclin when he did, the length of the field goal would have been much shorter.
“I have to be honest. I’m never going to say I chased Jeremy Maclin down. I’m never going to say Jeremy Maclin and I looked each other 1-on-1 in the eye and I took him down,” Branstetter said. “All I’m going to say is he didn’t see me coming. I was weaving through the crowd. He didn’t see me coming and nobody was blocking me.”
Branstetter admits that while making tackles on kickoffs may be dangerous, so is ignoring the pleas of his strong-willed coach.
“The first time I run down there and I do a flyby, he might be in my ear a little bit,” he said. “Then I might reconsider and maybe stay back and play a little bit of safety. If I continue to get in there and make tackles, he may not like that. That may not be his game plan. But sometimes you’ve just got to be a natural athlete and make plays, and that’s what I do.”
Besides, he’s working hard to put on muscle.
“He actually gained about 15 pounds in the offseason,” Mangino said. “And that really made him cocky.”
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