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A Day in the Life of A Kicker: Talking to K Matt Anderson

Walk into a Cal football practice on any given day. You'll see a group of quarterbacks lobbing passes to receivers. Linemen will be hitting bags or each other. Defensive backs and linebackers will be running through individual drills. Running backs will be working on hitting gaps. But what of the specialists? Much like Waldo, they're hidden in plain sight, starting with the man straight out of Remember the Titans, kicker Matt Anderson.

The man who looks like 'Sunshine' from the aforementioned film ended 2015 making his final ten field goals, and 15 of his final 16. For that, Anderson made the Lou Groza Award Watch List for Best Kicker. Though he no longer has kickoff duties, with Special Teams Coordinator Mark Tomerdahl starting Noah Beito at the spot to keep both players' legs fresh, Anderson remains the placekicker, and he went through his daily routine for us.

“It definitely depends on the day," Anderson said about his. "There are certainly days where we have to do a good job of watching our legs and Tommerdahl does a great job of that. There’s some days that I’ll spend a bit of time on the bike, just loosening up, doing a lot of stretching, but the past couple of days we’ve kicked a lot. We’ll come out, and we’ll have a good period of time during pre-practice, special teams starts period 10, so I’ll stretch a lot during pre-practice, work on my quarterback skills. But around period two, I’ll start warming up a bit, hitting some ‘no steps’ (kicks into a net without stepping into it), kinda progressing into ‘one steps’ and ‘full steps’ and then going into kickoff. Period 10 we’ve been kicking off and then after that we’ll go to the practice field and Tommerdahl has a list of things he wants us to work one, whether it’s specialty kicks or something like that. We do a good job of getting our work in, but there are the days where it’s a lot of stretching and loosening up the legs and keeping fresh. We don’t want to run the legs out during fall camp.”

The focus on fresh legs was a common refrain for the Bears during fall camp. Anderson estimates that, “During the average practice I try to limit it to about 30. Days we kick-off I probably hit two full step kickoffs, and when we do field goals I’ll hit 10 in warmup, 6 during team, and then after practice a couple more. I really try to focus on the quality of reps over the quantity."

Anderson's fresh legs have him confident in his range for the year. During the practice we talked after, he came up 2 or 3 yards short on a 56 yard field goal attempt, but he wasn't terribly miffed. “Yeah, I should have made it!" Anderson said of his kick. "I was excited that they called for it. Unfortunately, 56 yards out, there was a bit of a breeze, so it fell a little short. I’m feeling pretty good though, we switched balls from last year to this year, and the new one’s a lot better, it’s a different Nike ball, it’s a little bit thicker, which is better for kickers. I feel good about my range, I’m pretty confident from 55+."

On the thought of a thicker ball making a difference, there's a few small things that affect the kicker, such as getting the holder accustomed to holding for a lefty, as Dylan Klumph has done. Anderson remarked, "He’s doing really well. He’s come a long way from only starting to hold lefty last year. We worked a lot through the summer, and he’s been pretty perfect all through fall camp. I feel bad for the holders who have to adjust pretty quickly. You just have to flip everything. It’s tough for them to go from right to left, but it’s nice that Dylan’s gotten pretty solid on the left side."

Anderson's also happy about the continued consistency of long snapper Brad Northnagel. “It’s huge," Anderson said of Northnagel's consistency."Last year, I told Brad I saw laces on one PAT or field goal attempt through the entire year, and that’s just such a comfort to a kicker, having a long snapper that they know is going to be on it, and they know that the laces aren’t going to be facing toward you on a PAT/FG. Having him back this year adds to my comfort going through it."

Anderson isn't the type to rest on his laurels, even after an excellent first season of starting, saying "It felt good to perform well during my first season, but it’s a new season, so I’ve got to do it all over again on focus on what’s ahead of me." Anderson will have that opportunity Friday evening here, and Saturday afternoon in Sydney.

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