Most of the night we kept talking about our best player in this game was Dzioban, our punter. It is not usually a good thing when the punter is your best player, but it worked out this time. He gave us field position… Maybe Mozee ended up the best player after his 65 yard run late in the game.
Anyway, Dom had 7 punts for 46 yards average and with 0 return yardage. Contrast that with NW’s 7 punts for 33 yards average with Miami having 33 return yards. That was a difference of 13 yards per punt and another 33 yards on returns. Add that all together and it is 124 hidden yards. So while we got outgained by 86 yards, the punting game allowed us to maintain good field position all night.
He does a great job of hitting the punt that is required. He can pin the returner inside the 20 when called upon. But he can also adjust to what the returner is doing. He flipped the field by hitting a shorter punt that then ran 20 yards or so, confusing the returner. Really impressive.
I’d love to see us run Luke like Washington’s Kaelin DeBoer ran his tight end on a sweep against Stanford Saturday in PAC 12 After Dark. He’d be a natural on that call.