Ryan ChartrandTwo days after his kicker drew national attention for missed kicks during a 36-35 loss to Wisconsin, Cal Poly football head coach Rich Ellerson stressed Monday that there’s enough blame for the loss to go around.
Mustangs junior Andrew Gardner missed three extra points Saturday. The last miss came in overtime. Wisconsin won by scoring a touchdown and adding an extra point on the next possession.
“If everybody wants to throw Andrew under the bus, we’re going to need a bigger bus,” Ellerson said. “Because there are a lot of people that need to be under the bus.”
Dating back to his senior year at Davis High, Gardner had made 141 of 144 extra-point attempts entering the game.
Last year, he made a Cal Poly-record 40 in a row en route to an All-Great West Conference second team selection.
While Ellerson didn’t absolve Gardner from the misses in the 24-degree night, he emphasized that the rest of the kicking unit committed mistakes in protecting and snapping, as well.
One of them seemed to come before Gardner’s final miss.
With eight seconds left in regulation, sophomore Jake West, the Mustangs’ kickoff specialist who also handles long-range field goals, was well short on a 46-yard field-goal try that would’ve broken the tie.
Ellerson said after the game, though, that the long snapper didn’t hear the snap count due to the noise of the Camp Randall Stadium crowd of 80,709, resulting in West approaching the kick off-balance and double-clutching.
Gardner made his only field-goal try of the game, a 35-yarder with 2:32 remaining in the third quarter.
“We have some other guys who are on, quote, ‘first team,’ and they’re going to have to demonstrate that they can do some things that they didn’t do the other night,” Ellerson said. “That’s not just one position. It’s not quite as stark in folks’ ability to see those things. There are some other guys that are not having to suffer in public, but they’re suffering all the same.”
Saturday’s loss was reminiscent of the Mustangs’ only other defeat this season, 30-28 to Montana on Sept. 6, when Gardner was wide-left from 27 yards with 38 seconds left.
The week after, Ellerson opened up the spot for competition. In practice, Gardner and West each took tries from about 40 yards, while players gathered to simulate game environments by yelling, spraying water and throwing grass, and Gardner kept the job by being more consistently accurate.
This season, Gardner has made 7 of 14 field-goal attempts – tied with six others for fifth-worst in the 123-team FCS. Last year, he was 6 of 8. His career long is 36 yards.
“We’ll continue to make it competitive,” Ellerson said Monday, when Gardner was listed as the No. 1 placekicker, ahead of West, on the team’s official depth chart.
Gardner’s “beating himself up,” Ellerson said, but has the support of his teammates.
“He’s doing OK,” Ellerson added. “The guys are circling the wagons around him. He’ll be fine.
“It’s a tough business,” Ellerson said. “Everybody wants to be a kicker on Tuesday. Nobody wants to be out there when the wind’s blowing, it’s cold and there are a bunch of angry people after you.”
The Mustangs (8-2), ranked third in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA), could soon find themselves in another close game.
They open the playoffs by hosting No. 12 Weber State (9-3) at 6:05 p.m. Saturday in Alex G. Spanos Stadium.
Prior to last week’s 33-26 loss to Eastern Washington, the Wildcats’ only defeats came at the hands of Football Bowl Subdivision (I-A) Hawaii, 36-17 and Utah, 37-21.
“This is not ‘coach speak’ – if we’re just being honest about what we see when we turn on the tape, there are a bunch of us that just have to do what we did on the last 30 snaps,” Ellerson said. “If you can do it for 30 snaps, why can’t you do it for 31 snaps? Because if you do, we win.”
Editor’s note: For a preview of the football team’s playoff game against Weber State, please see the Mustang Daily’s Web site at mustangdaily.com on Friday morning.