It’s no secret that Liberty has struggled in the kicking game this season. Those concerns bubbled to the surface and came to the forefront in the team’s first loss of the season to Syracuse, 24-21. Alex Barbir missed his only field goal attempt, from 36 yards, on Liberty’s opening drive of the game.
Certainly that miss had an impact in Hugh Freeze electing to go for it on 4th down inside the 5 yard line late in the 4th quarter. As we all know, the Flames were stuffed on 4th down, failing to score on two trips inside the red zone in a three point loss. Liberty scored just one time in three trips in the red zone last Friday night against the Orange.
Barbir is now just 1 of 4 on field goals this season, with all of his kicks coming between 30 and 49 yards in distance. That is the same range he struggled from last season when he made just 5 of 12 kicks from that distance. Barbir was, however, a perfect 8/8 on kicks inside of 30 yards and outside of 50 yards in 2020, including his game winning kick at Virginia Tech. His struggles has led Freeze and special teams coordinator Tanner Burns to have the kicking situation evaluated this week.
“It’s definitely going to be evaluated,” said Freeze earlier this week. “One, I thought Alex kicked the ball off extremely well. Obviously, Alex has made some big kicks for us. But, at this point, yes we are going to look at all options. Points on that first drive would have been huge. It does play a role in your mind as the game goes on as you are making decisions. It certainly plays into it. I would have to talk to Tanner. I know he’s got 2 or 3 guys in mind to have some competition this week. I don’t really want to comment on that yet, but definitely will be some competition.”
Several kickers had an opportunity this week to grab hold of the starting position this week including Barbir, Jason Stricker, Brayden Beck, and Nick Brown. On Thursday, Freeze announced that true freshman Brayden Beck would get the call on Saturday in Birmingham against UAB.
“Brayden Beck is going to get the shot this week, unless it’s really long then we will stick with Alex,” Freeze said. “We’re going to give him the shot. He had a really good week of practice.”
For Freeze, it was a simple decision to make this week.
“To me, it’s about do they go through the uprights and are your times good on snap, hold, and kick,” he said. “If everybody’s times are similar on the snap, hold, and kick, I lean towards the one who is putting it through the uprights. He has had a consistency really since the start of camp. Curious to see how he will do in a hostile environment. We will go from there. It’s not that I don’t have confidence in the others, whether it be Stricker or Barbir or Brayden, Nick’s good too, another freshman. He’s right in there being consistent too. We’ve just got to find the one that’s got the hot hand right now.”
Beck has yet to see the field in a Liberty uniform. The 5’11”, 180 pound kicker is from Carrollton, Texas where he attended Hebron High School. Barbir will still handle kickoffs, and Freeze said the actual distance on how long of a field goal attempt Beck would try will not be determined until just prior to the start of the game after they have had time to see the conditions and how Beck is kicking in warmups.
“We got around (Beck) and yelled and screamed,” Freeze said of trying to get him prepared for what he will face underneath the lights of the brand new 45,000 seat Protective Stadium. “It’s nothing like it’s going to be Saturday night. He’s a true freshman, but he handled it. Bottom line, he made most of the field goals this week. I just think it’s time. Alex is still capable. We haven’t produced points from that unit that we need to. Let’s try something different.”
