2025 Gophers Position Previews: Special Teams

On the other side of this interminable heat, humidity, and rain is a precious thing in Minnesota: fall. To get you ready for it, Ski-U-Blog is again previewing this year's Gopher football team, one position group at a time. As in every preseason, we close this series with a look at the specialists.

Likely Starters

You didn't think we were done talking about Koi Perich, did you? Though he will need to take in some oxygen and fluids at some point, Perich's starting role at safety and forthcoming offensive contributions do not mean he is about to give up his job as Minnesota's primary returner.

Now, Perich does need to improve his judgement when fielding kickoffs. He plays brashly wherever he is on the field, and sometimes that has drawbacks. On his 16 kick returns in 2024, he only made it to the 25-yard line four times — not nearly often enough, especially when Perich's longest return was just for 32 yards. If he won't always make the right choice on taking back a kick, he at least needs to make a few of them really count.

Now, as a punt returner? Perich's dynamism here is not in doubt.

While he quieted down in the back half of the year, the threat of a big Perich punt return will always be there. If it comes at the right time, it could turn a game in the Gophers' favor.

Only one pure specialist returns from last season, sophomore long snapper Alan Soukup. The other positions have at least some mystery.

Mark Crawford was never a prodigious field-flipper as Minnesota's punter, getting by with placement that improved as his career progressed. There are two transfers competing to succeed Crawford, and neither really fits his mold.

Candidate 1 is Brody Richter. Richter has bounced around, starting as a regular student at Arizona State before punting for a year at Northern Arizona and then punting for another year at UCLA. His stats for the Bruins were entirely fine:

Richter's middling distance but solid hang time suggests he might have a little more leg in him than Crawford but could improve his work from around midfield. But these stats make up the profile of a perfectly adequate starting punter.

Candidate 2, Tom Weston spent the last two seasons at Division II Ouachita Baptist (Arkansas) thumping the ball. If the stats are correct, Weston has a sledgehammer for a right leg:

Weston's punts resulted in 0 return yards, and his longest effort — 76 yards — would have been the 5th-longest in FBS last year. These are promising facts.

However, we do not know how Weston's power will apply at a higher level. We don't know what Weston's hang time is. He might have kicked purely for distance because no Division II returner could catch up to the ball. Going from one 20-yard line to the other is not as valuable if the returner is fielding a line drive, and the coverage team cannot catch up. Additionally, against speedier rushers, Weston will have to accelerate his process, which could affect his accuracy and his power. While Weston is more eye-catching than Richter on paper, and he may well win the job, punting is as dependent on context as anything else in football.

Brady Denaburg is not guaranteed to serve as Minnesota's placekicker but appears to be the frontrunner. The senior arrives from Syracuse, where he spent three years handling kickoffs and kicked field goals for a season and change. In the latter duties, Denaburg demonstrated a pretty defined range: Six of his eight career unblocked misses were beyond 40, while only three of his 13 makes were.

Est. xPts are produced from the following formula:

y = -0.001x^2 + 0.026x + 2.7081

Where x is the field goal distance and y is the estimated xPts. This
is derived from the xPts findings in Bill Radjewski's
2023 post on kicker efficiency. Since I do not have the full dataset
to get a more exact formula, I am calling this xPts figure an estimate.
Graphed, the function's curve is close to what Radjewski's work
produced; for our purposes, it will suffice.

Denaburg will probably be worse than Dragan Kesich and Matthew Trickett, but for a one-year transfer, he can be passable as long as P.J. Fleck adjusts his 4th down decision-making for his kicker's limitations. History does not bode well on that front, but that's not really Denaburg's fault.

Daniel Jackson brings a familiar name but has nothing to do with past Daniels Jackson in the program. (At least, as far as we know.) The true freshman from Alexandria has competed with Denaburg in camp and could serve as kickoff specialist before moving into the starting placekicking job next season. He has the leg for it, having produced an 83.2 percent touchback rate after his freshman year. In his career, Jackson was 95.7 percent on extra points, and he hit a 54-yard field goal that tied for the 2nd-longest in the history of Minnesota high school football.

Key Backups

While Perich will be the primary returner, it would not be surprising if he only fields around two-thirds of the kicks and punts. Quintin Redding is back for his last year and does not have any other job on this team. His returns have been hit-or-miss, but the Gophers know he can do it and occasionally provide a big return.

Logan Loya is another option on punts, having returned 33 of them in his years at UCLA. Minnesota fans have actually seen the third-longest return of Loya's career:

His longest, a 31-yard return against Arizona State in 2023, is not on YouTube.

He has some skill with the ball in his hands, but the fact he has not scored a touchdown indicates what kind of ceiling Loya offers.

Notables Unlikely to Contribute

Le'Meke Brockington and Darius Taylor have both returned kickoffs and taken warmup reps with the returners. Javon Tracy has never returned a punt in a game but has practiced it; the same goes for Evan Redding and kickoffs. There are many other players on the team who returned kicks at previous stops and have the athleticism to try it again, like transfer tailback A.J. Turner or redshirt freshman cornerback Mike Gerald, but they probably won't get a shot.

Kickers David Kemp and Sam Henson will not appear this season unless disaster strikes. The same goes for punters Caleb McGrath — who I must annually mention is ambipedal — and Luke Ryerse. Ryerse enrolled early in the spring and got to pitch for the Gopher baseball team. His brother, Grant, handled kickoffs at the U of M in 2019.

True freshman Jakob Lutz is the backup snapper. The emergency snapper, as always, is unknown.