MSU kicker Matt Coghlin earns Co-Special Teams Player of the Week honor

Matt Coghlin is the Big Ten’s Co-Special Teams Player of the Week after making his fourth career game winning field goal.

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Matt Coghlin showed up in a familiar way once again in Michigan State’s Saturday afternoon upset over Northwestern. The senior kicker drained three field goals from 22, 44 and 48-yards to help push the Spartans past the Wildcats. This is Coghlin’s third multi field goal game of the season.

A 48-yard field goal with 2:47 left in the game was the game winner for the Spartans. This would be the fourth career game-winning field goal for Coghlin in his time in East Lansing.

Another great outing from the senior kicker has earned him a Big Ten weekly award in the form of Co-Special Teams Player of the Week with Iowa’s kicker Keith Duncan.

Keith Duncan of @HawkeyeFootball and Matt Coghlin of @MSU_Football are #B1GFootball Co-Special Teams Players of the Week. pic.twitter.com/rDawwgaBqC

— Big Ten Football (@B1Gfootball) November 30, 2020

This is the third time in Coghlin’s career he will be taking home this honor. He was also the last Spartan to win this honor for his performance against Indiana in the fall of 2018.

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Projecting the post-spring Michigan State football special teams depth chart

A number of positions will be up for grabs with the Michigan State specialists in 2020.

Spring football across America was wiped out by the coronavirus pandemic, putting Mel Tucker and his new Michigan State football staff behind the eight ball when it comes to player evaluations. Spring practices and scrimmages are paramount in stacking a football team’s depth chart and doubly so when the program has a new head coach and assistants.

That makes projecting depth charts as we enter the summer a bit more difficult. But that’s no excuse to not do it.

A couple weeks ago I projected the depth chart on the offensive side of the ball and earlier this week I took a crack at the defense.

Today I’ll look at the much less sexy, but always important, specialists. This is an area where only one job is guaranteed as we sit here in May.

Kicker

Matt Coghlin (Sr.) or Jack Olsen (Fr.)

Kicker is going to be a very interesting battle this year. For the first time in his career Matt Coghlin will have a true battle to win for his job. Last year Coghlin struggled mightily and there was nobody to really push him. Olsen is an early enrollee and provides another scholarship leg to MSU’s kicking room. Coghlin may have a slight upper hand given his experience and success in the past, but his 2019 season makes this an open competition.

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