Northwestern All-Quarter Century Team: Specialists

With 25 years already behind us, we are heading into the second quarter of the 21st century. So we thought we would look back on the first quarter century of Northwestern football and hand out some accolades.

We’ve already named our first-team Offense and Defense over the last 25 years. Now, it’s time to reward the specialists, who are often overlooked but can easily mean the difference between a win and a loss.

We won’t include long snapper or holder — it’s difficult to tell how good they are unless they mess up — but here is the best Wildcat placekicker, punter, kick returner and punt returner over the last quarter century.

K Jeff Budzien (2010-13)

This one is a no-brainer. Budzien is the most accurate kicker in NU history, a two-time All-Big Ten pick who won back-to-back Bakken-Amersen Big Ten Kicker of the Year Awards, after the 2012 and 2013 seasons. He was also a first-team All-American in 2013.

Budzien owns school records for career points (280), career field goal percentage (.872), most consecutive made field goals (17) and, maybe most impressively, he never missed a PAT, going 136-for-136. Budzien also holds a slew of single-season records, including field goals made (23, in 2013), kicking points (107, in 2012) and accuracy (19-of-20 or 95.0% in 2012).

P J.J. Standring (1998-01)

Standring played just two years in this century, but his name is all over the Northwestern record books. He has single-game records for most punts (13) and punting yards (551, 1998 vs. Ohio State). He has season records for most punting yards (3,404, in 1999) and most punts over 50 yards (19, in 2001). He has career records for most punts (305), yards (12,639) and punts over 50 yards (57). He ranks third in career punting average (41.4, the best this centry), has four of the top six spots for most punting yards in a game and ranks both first and third in most punting yards in a season.

Standring, who also played baseball for Northwestern, had a big leg and, for three of his four years, he played for losing teams that really needed it.

KR Solomon Vault (2014-17)

Vault brought four kickoffs back for touchdowns in his career, the most in Northwestern history and tied for the most in Big Ten annals. His first one came as a true freshman in 2014, and he added two in 2015 to become the only man in Northwestern history with more than one in a season. He then added a final one in 2016 to put it out of reach for the foreseeable future. The next man on Northwestern’s all-time kickoff-return TD list is Pug Rentner, with two, and those came in 1930 and 1931.

Vault, who also played wide receiver and running back for the Wildcats, got his money’s worth on his scoring returns, too: three of the four went for 95 or more yards. His average per return of 25.3 yards ranks fourth in school history.

PR Venric Mark (2010-13)

One of the most electric players in Northwestern history, Mark was a threat every time he touched the ball. As a true freshman in 2010, he averaged 12.9 yards per punt return and was named a first-team Big Ten All-Freshman and second-team Freshman All-American selection. In 2011, he was even better, averaging 15.9 yards on eight punt returns but he did not have enough attempts to qualify for a national ranking — if he had, he would have ranked third nationally and first in Big Ten. But 2012 was Mark’s year: he averaged 18.7 yards to top the Big Ten and make the FWAA first-team All-America team. In the opener at Syracuse that year, Mark set a school record with 134 punt-return yards on two returns, including an 82-yard touchdown that was NU’s first since 2005.

Mark, who also returned kickoffs and started at running back in 2012, is NU’s all-time leader with an average of 16.3 yards per return. He played in just three games due to injuries in 2013 (including one as a linebacker, believe it or not). He was suspended before the 2014 season and transferred to play his fifth and final year at West Texas A&M.

Northwestern All-Quarter Century Team Selections: Offense | Defense