Steve Sarkisian heaps praise upon key members of Texas' special teams
Specialists are often overlooked when assessing an 85-man college football roster. However, they play a key role not just in starting games, but also in determining their final result.
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Texas should have a veteran manning each of the specialist spots this year. Bert Auburn returns as field goal kicker, Will Stone is back after his freshman season as the kickoff specialist, and Stanford transfer Ryan Sanborn is set to join the Longhorn football program in June.
At a Touchdown Club of Houston luncheon in late April, Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian was asked about his specialist corps. Here’s what he had to say.
Bert Auburn
“Bert Auburn kicked field goals for us a year ago and made some really big kicks,” Sarkisian said. “I’m going to name two. We take a bad sack against Alabama at the end of the game and he hits from 49 with a minute left to give us the lead, which was a critical kick. We had 16 seconds to run two plays to get those completions done, and he kicks a field goal from 40-something yards to tie the game at Tech. I know he’s a big game kicker. He missed a couple that I would like to have back, but I didn’t think our battery was very good — snap, hold — before the kick. There’s some things to clean up there.”
Auburn, a 6-foot-0, 181-pound junior from Flower Mound (Texas), was 21-of-26 on field goals last year. He also converted all 55 of his extra point attempts, and finished the year with 118 points.
Will Stone
“Will Stone was our kickoff guy, was a true freshman last year and I think he’s getting stronger and a bigger leg,” Sarkisian said. “I don’t like covering kickoffs, I like touchbacks. So we cover them really hard so most people shut them down against us anyway.”
Stone, a product of Austin (Texas) Regents School, had 86 kickoffs with 26 touchbacks.
Ryan Sanborn
“Punter, we’re taking a transfer, Ryan Sanborn, who was a four-year starter at Stanford,” Sarkisian said. “He’s graduating from Stanford this spring and he’ll be with us this June. We’re excited to have a veteran punter back there who can do all the different style of kicks that are important to us.”
Sanborn played in 42 career games for the Cardinal. He has kickoff and field goal experience, but he comes to Texas to punt. Last season, Sanborn punted 57 times with a long of 59 and averaged 41.7 yards per punt. Eighteen of his punts were downed inside the 20, and 22 of them were fair caught.
Texas finished No. 44 in ESPN’s special teams SP+ metric last season.
