Osborne tackles special challenges.

Byline: Rob Moseley The Register-Guard

He has the same office he occupied during his last stint at Oregon, but other than that, much is different for Tom Osborne, coordinator for the Ducks' special teams. There are different players, of course, and a different offense for the tight ends he also coaches.

On special teams, at least, a little bit of change would be a welcome thing for the UO football team. Last in punting and ninth in kickoff coverage last season, and fourth in punt returns despite a propensity for fumbling, the Ducks hired Osborne to run special teams after two seasons without a coordinator. Osborne is back at Oregon after six years at Arizona State, which followed his first term with the Ducks, also of six years.

Other changes are afoot, too, by rule of the NCAA. Most notably, kickoffs will take place from the 30-yard line rather than the 35. Expected to severely limit the number of touchbacks, the change puts further pressure on the Ducks to improve their porous coverage, but should allow more chances for their talented returners to thrive.

"It's like in baseball, if you know the guy's going to throw you a strike every time," Osborne said. "That's pretty fun."

Particularly when one of your potential returners is home-run threat Jonathan Stewart, who has led the Pac-10 in kickoff return average two years running. Stewart averaged an even 30 yards per return over two seasons, with two touchdowns, a number Osborne hopes will increase soon.

"We don't just try to stick the ball up there and get to the 25-yard line, or average a particular starting field position," Osborne said. "We're trying to score every time we get the ball. And if we don't, we're trying to make corrections about why we didn't score."

The other side of the coin, of course, is keeping the other team from doing the same. In 2006, Oregon allowed the second-most kickoff return yards in the Pac-10. On average, opponents took over on offense at their 27-yard line.

Last season, the NCAA lowered kickoff tees to 1 inch to increase returns, with negligible effects. Hence the new placement on the 30-yard line next fall.

"Almost every ball is going to be returned nowadays," said Osborne, whose ASU unit was second in the Pac-10 in kickoff coverage last fall. "If you're covering every one, you're covering around 80 kicks a year. If you have three of them you don't cover right, that's three touchdowns. So that's going to put a huge burden on every coverage team in the country."

The onus will be on kickoff specialists - in Oregon's case, Matt Evensen - to achieve better hang time and more accurate placement on their kicks. And then on the other 10 players to get downfield and make tackles, their opportunities to do so - and suffer injuries on the violent collisions such plays produce - having increased significantly under the new rules.

Aiding in that are new drills implemented by Osborne, following Bellotti's desire to stress more competitive situations in practice this spring.

"He's a good coach," said UO rover and special teams standout Patrick Chung. "He's making special teams exciting."

That was part of the plan when Bellotti brought Osborne back to Oregon, after two seasons in which the Ducks split the various special teams up among their assistants.

"There's certainly a much better degree of organization," Bellotti said.

Bellotti himself is again coaching Oregon's punters, something of a specialty for the UO head coach.

His main charge is Josh Syria, now atop the depth chart after sitting out last season as a transfer.

Syria is holding off the challenge of sophomore walk-on Tim Taylor so far, and seems potentially capable of being one of the team's best punters in recent memory.

During last week's scrimmage, Syria had two punts with a hang time of more than 5 seconds, two-tenths above his goal. And his get-off time - from snap to kick - is less than 2 seconds on average, and more than two-tenths under Oregon's average the past three years, according to Bellotti.

"He's the closest thing to Bidwell since Josh Bidwell," Bellotti said, invoking the current NFL punter who set a UO record by averaging 46 yards per punt in 1998.

"I feel like I've been getting in rhythm with the snappers," Syria said. "Our punt team as a whole is starting to function up to expectations and get into rhythm."

Syria began his college career at Wofford, which used the "shield" blocking technique that Oregon employed two seasons ago.

This year, under Osborne, the Ducks will use a traditional spread formation similar to what they employed last season, with a personal protector for the punter flanked by two wingbacks set back from the line of scrimmage.

"An offensive tackle that has to pass protect a speed rusher off the edge, that's the hardest thing to do, and guys that can really do it well get paid lots of money to do it," Osborne said, comparing offensive tackles who block defensive ends with the punt team's wingbacks taking on defenders charged with blocking kicks. "So we just back those guys off, just so the guys have their body in a better position to block those guys."

At placekicker, Evensen and Morgan Flint are battling this spring, but freshman Daniel Padilla is expected to challenge for the job in the fall.

That's in line with the sense of newness Oregon hopes to achieve on special teams as a whole, with a new coordinator potentially yielding new - and improved - results.

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