The Cardinal Countdown: 45 Days Until Kickoff

#45 John Wallace

Class: RS Senior

Ht/Wt: 6-0/190

Position: Kicker

Hometown: Cecilia, KY

Twitter: @johnwallace45

Thoughts: Wallace is a hell of a kicker, and I’ll take some of the credit for it, seeing as I called him out as a future star almost three years ago. “Wallace and Bomb It” was a good nickname, even if it never took off.

Wallace continues his pre-season dominance once again in 2015 being placed on the Lou Groza watch list. Even though Wallace has come up short the last couple of seasons he’s been stacked up against some fairly ridiculous competition. Lets take a look...

2013

Winner: Robert Aguayo (FSU); 100% EP (94/94), 95.5% FG (21/22), only miss was 40-49yd range.

Wallace: 96.3% EP (52/54), 83.3% FG (20/24), one miss 50+, one miss 40-49, two misses 20-29

2014

Winner: Brad Craddock (MARY); 100% EP (44/44), 94.7% FG (18/19), only miss was 50+ but was 2-3 on the season from that range and 9-9 from 40-49yd

Wallace: 100% EP (50/50), 78.9% FG (15/19), two misses 40-49, two misses 30-39

Wallace tightened up the extra points, going perfect last year but took a small dip in his FG%. This of course isn’t a one to one comparison as field position (hash mark), weather conditions, snap, etc all come into play. The nice takeaway from 2014 was that Wallace was perfect under 30 yards and was at 89.5% up to 40 yards. I fully expect Wallace to improve his overall percentage and stay locked in from close range. When you look at the stats from 2013 it’s crazy to think Aguayo took 94 extra point attempts and 22 field goal attempts. Florida St was lighting up the scoreboard that year and sometimes that’s what it takes to get noticed as a kicker. I know we all hope ‘Bobby ball’ from years past makes a return in 2015, but maybe none of us more so than Wallace himself.

The one complaint I hear about Wallace is his length off the tee. I mentioned this a few days ago when covering Jon Brown but Wallace’s touchback percentage isn’t that great and his average yardage on kickoffs was actually slightly under that of Browns (obviously a smaller sample size). I don’t want anyone other than Wallace on the field for field goals but wouldn’t be upset to see Brown or someone else try and show off a big leg on kickoffs…as long as they keep it inbounds.

Sweet Tweet:

Is it just me, or does it look like @Lozo_Mauldin_IV has really small arms compared to mine? pic.twitter.com/54gBAkF9Mr

— John Wallace (@johnwallace45) October 17, 2014

Pretty embarrassing for Lozo, really. I’m sure the Jets will get him in the gym.

(FYI:Wallace is a pretty solid follow on twitter, check him out if you haven’t already)