Liam Evans "55" Yards

[WishBone]

If nothing else, Liam Evans has been eating well since he enrolled at Oklahoma in January.

When the homegrown freshman kicker moved to Norman from nearby Moore, he weighed in at a rather diminutive 165 pounds. Eight weeks later, he’s bulked up to a stout 180 as he prepares for his first spring practice period as a college football player.

And sure, that’s partially due to the Jerry Schmidt effect. But Evans also credits his favorite local taco establishment.

“I’d probably have to say Torchy’s,” he laughed. “I’ve been there a bunch of times. I’d probably say the Trailer Park [is my favorite], and their queso is, like, the best queso out there.”

Torchy’s is indeed a top local haunt for many Oklahoma football players, especially after a long day of workouts and meetings and study. Evans and the rest of the Sooners’ specialists can be found there on many a weeknight. But when a new morning dawns, he can always be found in the hallowed shadow of Owen Field, basking in the blessing of being a Sooner.

“I eat breakfast looking at the stadium every day,” he remarked. “It’s pretty surreal, pretty awesome.”

The word “surreal” is an oft-utilized label, and its meaning has become somewhat diluted with ubiquitous contemporary usage. But it’s about the only word that truly encapsulates the sheer improbability of Evans’ journey to Oklahoma.

Today, he’s one of 110 young men entrusted with the honor of carrying Oklahoma’s rich tradition of gridiron excellence into the SEC. But five years ago, he didn’t have any designs on ever playing football, period.

“I know I could kick farther than that”
Liam Evans stands 5 feet, 8 inches tall. He doesn’t possess what one would generally consider to be Football Genetics. If you passed him on one of the campus sidewalks, you certainly wouldn’t confuse him for Ethan Downs or Danny Stutsman or Jackson Arnold.

And throughout his childhood, Evans never owned any delusions of gridiron grandeur. Instead, he focused on soccer, as it was the sport he most enjoyed — and a sport in which he demonstrated a level of talent. His father, Sean, recalls that Liam never expressed much interest in diversifying his athletic profile beyond the pitch. But that didn’t stop his peers from pressuring him to pursue other athletic endeavors.

“When he got to eighth grade,” Sean chuckled, “the kids on the football team that were his friends were like, ‘Dude, we’re very bad. You’re at least an athlete. Would you come help us? Would you at least come kick? We don’t have anybody that can punt; we don’t have anybody that can do kickoff.’”

Evans staunchly rebuffed his comrades’ exhortations, but agreed to come watch the next game as a gesture of support. As fate would have it, the game happened to be a showdown between the two major middle schools that jointly feed into Moore High School. And when Evans witnessed both teams’ abominable special teams play, he began to reconsider.

“We went to the game,” said Sean, “and there’s a punt or two, and he’s like, ‘Whoa. They’re really bad. I know I could kick farther than that.’ And I was like, go try it. Go talk to the coach. And he goes to the coach the next day, and he just says, ‘Hey, I don’t want to do anything else. But if you’ll have me to just kick, I’ll do it.’ He only kicked three or four games that season, because half the season was over.”

The next fall, Evans played on the freshman team at Moore High. Although still relatively new to the process and technique of kicking the pigskin, he enjoyed a rather successful campaign, and gradually began to fall in love with football. He decided to focus exclusively on his craft the following offseason, and steadily improved his accuracy and range. In the fall of 2021, he moved up to the varsity level for Moore and became the Lions’ starting kicker as a sophomore.

“He had an awesome 10th-grade season,” Sean remarked, “and the very last game of the season, he kicked a game-winner with three seconds left against Mustang. And at that point, he’s hooked. He’s like, ‘I’m doing this.’ And he just got after it, and the rest is just history.”

Just like that, Evans’ soccer dreams officially hit the shelf. A new dream was born, and a new goal established.
“No place was like this place”
Kicking is life for Morgan Lineberry. A four-year starter at Abilene Christian, he briefly spent time in camp with the Carolina Panthers in 2013 before embarking on a career as a coach. Lineberry gives private kicking lessons and also served as a kicking consultant for the Cleveland Browns in 2022, but the bulk of his work over the last decade has come as a regional instructor for Kohl’s Kicking.

As is the case for most successful coaches, Lineberry doesn’t make a habit of mincing his words. And he doesn’t have much of a doubt that Evans can make an impact as a collegiate kicker from the get-go.

“He’s definitely one of the most talented guys in his class from a leg-speed perspective and just being able to hit the ball far enough,” Lineberry opined. “And then above and beyond that, he’s shown a really good mentality and competitiveness. He’s going to be game-ready [on] Day 1.”

Evans isn’t the first Sooner that Lineberry has coached; as a matter of fact, every one of Oklahoma’s primary placekickers dating back to 2015 is a Lineberry protégé. He’s worked with Austin Seibert and Gabe Brkic, and one of his current clients is Zach Schmit. But when it became clear that Evans was angling for a spot on the Oklahoma roster, Lineberry didn’t mind playing the devil’s advocate — and he had good reason to do so.

“I’ve seen some other guys go to the school that they grew up supporting, and sometimes I think that can become a burden,” Lineberry explained. “Sometimes I have to tell guys, ‘You need to be a mercenary from a mentality perspective.’ Because it frees you up to go and do the job, rather than having all this extra mental and emotional baggage. You feel like you’re letting down the people you care about that much more [if you miss]. And I expressed that concern, but Liam didn’t seem to be bothered by that at all.”

Lineberry knows firsthand that the cognitive side of kicking can be heavy. If a kicker gets in a mental rut, it can be incredibly difficult to escape. There’s perhaps no better example of this phenomenon than Brkic, who didn’t miss a single field goal in 2019 but quickly got off on the wrong foot — no pun intended — in 2020. In the Sooners’ conference opener, he misfired from 54 yards in a steady rain against Iowa State, his first collegiate miss. In the grand scheme of things, it was a highly forgivable error. But it seemed to fray Brkic’s confidence nonetheless, and after that immaculate 2019 campaign, he hit just 77 percent of his kicks over the next two seasons.

I’ve been very impressed with his mentality. He’s very even-keel, which is obviously something you want to look for in somebody who’s going to be a specialist — particularly someone you might call on to hit field goals when they matter.
— Lineberry, on Evans' most impressive traits

Given his long-held allegiance to Oklahoma, how much more could the inherent pressure crush Evans if one day he missed a crucial kick? Would he feel a greater sense of responsibility for a miscue if it meant a loss for his beloved Sooners? That was Lineberry’s worry, and he dutifully voiced it to Evans and his family.

But that possibility didn’t bother Evans — and perhaps that’s because it long seemed apparent that the Sooners wouldn’t recruit him at all. Had Brkic not chosen to forgo his final year of eligibility to enter the draft, Evans’ story might have unwound very differently.

“Oklahoma was always the hope,” Sean acknowledged. “But I think for a while, we didn’t even think we were going to have a conversation with Jay Nunez. Because the way that things went with Gabe Brkic, it didn’t seem like they were going to take a ’24 [kicker]. And then Gabe ended up declaring, and Zach took over, and all of a sudden it looked like a ’24 might be in the mix. And then he hears from Jay, goes to camp. And they just kept talking, and he kept coming back to stuff, kept getting invited to things.”

As the interest from Nunez and Oklahoma began to ramp up, Evans’ stock began to rise nationally. Kohl’s Kicking is the only reputable service that comprehensively ranks kickers nationwide, and when Evans had first attended a Kohl’s camp for rankings consideration, he’d landed outside the top 100. But as he continued to sharpen his mechanics and increase his power, his ranking began to rise — first into the top 100, then the top 50, then the top 25, then the top 10.

By July of 2023, Evans was knocking on the door of national top-five status, and he’d earned a spot at the Kohl’s National Scholarship Camp in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. In an equivalent sense, that camp is the Elite11 of the kicking world.

“So he ends up the top field-goal kicker of the whole event,” Sean recalled. “And that night, Jay Nunez was on the phone [saying], ‘Hey. Don’t talk to anybody else.’ And Nunez called him the next morning and said, ‘Coach V wants you. I want you.’ And we had the Party at the Palace like two or three days later, and Coach Nunez gave him his poker chip, and he basically gave it right back to him.”

Evans didn’t need to think twice. He’d already had a conversation about integrity with his father. He knew that Oklahoma wanted him, that he wanted Oklahoma, and that it made no sense to play games with the recruitment process. He’d drawn interest from numerous other FBS programs, but home was home.

“It wasn’t a super hard decision,” said Evans. “I remember my first game — I don’t remember how old I was. I was pretty small. I went with my uncle, my grandpa and my dad… I’ve been watching them my whole life.”

On August 8, 2023, just over a week after handing his crimson-and-cream poker chip to Nunez to signify his “all-in” status, Evans announced his pledge to the Sooners. The soccer kid was going to be an Oklahoma football player.

And seven months later, as he sat in the club level of the stadium on spring media day with a gaggle of reporters clustered around him, the awe still hadn’t entirely worn off.

“Obviously, the school’s been on my radar my whole life — ever since I started kicking, basically,” he admitted. “But I didn’t start getting recruited by this place until probably August of my junior year. At that time, I started to really look at this place. And all along, this was my favorite school. No place was like this place. No place felt like home like this place did… It’s pretty surreal to just be here, and being in that facility every day is kind of crazy to me.”

“I’ve never seen him fold or buckle”
Scott Blanton knows the kicker’s perpetual plight all too well. It would be the understatement of the year to say the Norman native and Oklahoma alumnus has been in low places.

“I think one of the most difficult things,” remarked Blanton, “is when you get the outside pressure of fans and people that don’t know what kicking is about — when you miss a 50-yarder into the wind, the fans and the media get on your butt. But you go out there and you make a 28-yarder and everybody thinks you’re the best.”

As a freshman at Oklahoma in 1991, Blanton found himself thrust into immediate starting duty as the Sooners’ placekicker. To put it mildly, the results were disastrous — and by today’s standards, unfathomably so. Hampered by a hip injury throughout the campaign, Blanton attempted 17 field goals and made all of four. For those not inclined to perform the quick math, that’s a 24 percent conversion rate — and for context’s sake, consider that Zach Schmit’s 71 percent field-goal clip last year had Oklahoma fans on the verge of mutiny.

The low point in Blanton’s freshman campaign came in a 10-7 loss to Texas at the Cotton Bowl, in which he misfired on all three of his field-goal attempts and wore the dunce cap in the public eye. And yet despite the criticism and scrutiny, Blanton battled back. He rebounded to hit 16 of 18 attempts as a sophomore, which earned him second-team All-Big Eight honors. He would later land first-team recognition as a senior in 1994 before embarking on a four-year NFL career with the Washington Redskins.

For the past quarter-century, Blanton has been working as a kicking instructor, and has helped develop a myriad of young kickers that have gone on to play college and professional football. His past clients include a pair of decorated ex-Sooners in kicker Michael Hunnicutt (2011-14) and punter Michael Turk (2021-22), and Evans is one of the more recent additions to Blanton’s list of pupils.

He’s just a good young man. He does the right things; he’s from a great family. Great parents. He has a little brother that’s terrific that I’m training as well. His parents have done good with him, and he’s going to do well on and off the field.
— Blanton, on his perspective of Evans

It didn’t take long for the former Sooner to realize that he could challenge the future Sooner, with no kid gloves required.

“The first thing I watch is, I want to make sure that he’s doing the small stuff right so that when he’s on his own, he’s getting better,” Blanton explained. “He usually is always on top of it. So that’s the first thing we do, is make sure the no-steps are good and we do the drills. Then the next step is, we try to do as many snaps and holds, as many game reps as possible. We try to stay off the sticks — the little [artificial] holders — because that’s not really realistic. You want a lot of snaps and holds.

“And then I’ll test him right at the beginning; we’re gonna go 45, 50, 55-yarders right at the beginning. Because you are going to miss a few [in] 20-25 kicks of 50-yarders. I want to put him in those pressure situations, then move him back up and give him some shorter ones.”

And although he’s only recently begun to train Evans, Blanton quickly came to realize what everyone in Evans’ inner circle has known for some time: the youngster doesn’t need to develop nerves of steel. He’s always had them. It’s who he is.

“What separates him is the mental part,” Blanton observed. “He does not get too high; he does not get too low. He’s steady. He doesn’t miss very often anyways, but when he does miss, you wouldn’t know from his demeanor.”

Aside from being a father of five children, Sean is a pastor whose ministry has deeply entrenched him in the Moore community. He’s got a rather large social network. And even so, he’s adamant that he hasn’t encountered anyone with a personality that matches that of his son.

“I don’t know anybody quite like this kid,” Sean laughed. “He’s quiet and confident. And it’s not like a quietness because he lacks confidence. He just doesn’t care. I ask him, ‘Hey, how do you feel like you’re gonna stack up against Tyler [Keltner] and Zach [Schmit]?’ He will genuinely tell me, ‘I don’t care. I’m not thinking about that. I’m only thinking about competing with myself.’ He doesn’t get too high; he doesn’t get too low.”

Lineberry has witnessed Evans’ evolution as a kicker for nearly three years, but he can attest that there’s been no evolution with regard to mental approach. Evans’ ability to isolate his attention on a specific task, big or small, is simply hardwired into his DNA.

“His level of focus is very clear,” Lineberry noted. “It’s very clear that Liam can hone in on what exactly he wants to accomplish and what exactly he wants to focus on. And I don’t know any way to put it, other than once he sets his mind on something, he’s got all of his energy directed towards that, both mentally and physically.”

There’s one anecdote in particular that illustrates just how unshakable Evans really is. Several weeks prior to his commitment to Oklahoma, he attended one of the Sooners’ June prospect camps in order to further showcase his skills for the staff and get an in-person evaluation. When noon came, Nunez dismissed the other specialists to lunch, but told Evans not to go anywhere.

“Nunez,” said Sean, “tells all the kids that are at the camp, ‘All right, guys, go get Chick-fil-A in the indoor. Liam, stick around.’ And he says, ‘Coach V wants to come watch. He wants to do a private session with you. Josh Plaster’s gonna hold for you. We’re gonna set something up.’ And the crazy thing was, they didn’t have goalposts in the stadium that day because of graduation or something. So we come over to the practice field, which is kind of messed up and there’s all this other stuff going on. So it was like chaos was happening all around him.”

Evans was loose and ready to roll. He’d never kicked in front of the head ball coach before, and now that opportunity was minutes away. He waited for Venables… and waited… and waited.

“And Coach V didn’t come for 30 minutes, and then he didn’t come for 45 minutes, and then he didn’t come for 55 minutes,” said Sean. “He’s on his way, and then he’ll get stopped. All the typical things for Coach V. And then the lunch break is over, and so now they’ve got all the offensive line kids that are back at camp with Coach Bedenbaugh. They’re right in the middle of everything, they’re running around him, he’s trying to stay warm.”

In that moment, Sean found himself praying that somehow, some way, Venables wouldn’t show up at all. But Liam had a different outlook.

“It’s absolute chaos,” declared Sean. “And I’m personally thinking to myself, ‘Boy, this is a recipe for disaster.’ You got one shot with Coach V, and you’re gonna do it after all this waiting and all this chaos. And Liam’s stretching on the ground, and I’m just going, ‘God, please just let it be that he’s not going to be able to make it.’ Because this is totally a mess; this is not a good situation.

“And Liam looks at me, and he goes, ‘Dad, I don’t care how long it takes. I just hope he comes.’”

In the words of Oklahoma’s own Garth Brooks, some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. And on that warm June afternoon, Sean experienced that reality firsthand.

“It was like they were unintentionally icing him for 55 minutes, and he just kept staying warm, doing his thing,” he recalled. “And Coach V did show up, and Liam kicked lights-out for him. So he’s never kicked in front of ninety thousand people, but he has kicked in some high-pressure situations. How that translates, God only knows, but I’ve never seen him fold or buckle.”

“35’s your number, man”
From the game-winner at Mustang during his sophomore year to the all-important workout in front of Venables, Evans had never wavered in crucial moments before. But with a spot in the Under Armour All-American Game on the line, his mortality was finally showing.

It may not have been apparent to his peers at the Kohl’s National Scholarship Camp. But come the final morning of competition, Sean saw his stalwart son experience a case of the butterflies.

“There are 12 points possible per session, and there’s three sessions,” he explained. “And he goes out on day one and kicks 11 out of 12. Other kids are thrilled that they’re hitting 8 or 9, and he’s so frustrated with himself that he kicked an 11. Well, second session, he kicks a 12. [Next] morning, he was sick to his stomach. I’ve never seen him that nervous. Couldn’t eat breakfast.”

And yet, even in perhaps his most vulnerable mental state, Evans delivered another clinical performance.

“We get to the camp, and he steps up and he kicks a perfect 12,” Sean chuckled. “He ended up with a 35 out of 36, and he won the whole tournament. He won the whole thing; he was the highest scorer. And he’s always won the number 35 for Moore; that was just the number they gave him. But that was the moment that we were like, ’35’s your number, man. Because you gotta remember that when the pressure was the highest, you stepped up and did it. So when you wear the number 35 on your chest and the pressure feels high, you need to look down at that and remember [you’ve] been here before.’”

And in a way, the number 35 is also a constant reminder that the pursuit of perfection is asymptotic. Evans stood alone atop the camp leaderboard, but there was still one point that had eluded him. And before the competition concluded, Evans found himself on the receiving end of another stark reminder: there are always factors at play that are fundamentally uncontrollable.

I’d probably say 55 [yards] in-game is my limit right now. I had two 51’s in my senior year.
— Evans, on his maximum range

“He was hitting every field goal right down the middle,” Lineberry recalled. “Great height, great rotation. I think we went back to 65 or 67 yards before he missed his first field goal. And there was hardly any wind. I think his first miss was at 65, and it was right down the middle, and it fell just short.”

Alas, it was that singular long-distance miss that cost Evans a berth in the All-American Game. The structure of the camp had pitted the top 5 field-goal kickers and the top 5 finishers in the kickoff competition against each other in the final challenge. Evans was the only individual who finished in the top 5 of both preliminary competitions. But after his miss from 65 yards, the next two kickers drilled their attempts to knock Evans out of contention.

He wasn’t going to Orlando. But Evans had firmly cemented his status as one of the nation’s finest kicking prospects.

The odds are quite slim that Evans will ever be asked to convert a 65-yard field goal in a Sooner uniform. But as far as the more practical demands of kicking at the FBS level, there aren’t many holes in his approach. Evans himself has stated that his in-game max is roughly 55 yards right now, and Lineberry sees no reason why he shouldn’t connect at a prolific rate when asked to attempt kicks within his range. And as Evans adds muscle, that range ought to increase.

“From a technique perspective, he’s very polished, and that’s evident in the way that the ball flies on his field goals,” Lineberry noted. “He hits a straight ball with clean rotation; he’s able to finish toward his target. He does a lot of things well from a technical perspective. Where he has the most room to grow is what he’s doing right now in the spring — getting a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger and trying to increase his physical potential as far as how much leg speed and how much power he can generate with his motion.”


“We’re gonna make each other better”
On February 5, some three weeks after the Sooners’ 22 early enrollees reported to campus, Nunez treated Evans and the rest of the specialists to dinner.

During their meal, Nunez dropped a stunning piece of news on the group. He’d been offered the special teams coordinator position at Alabama, and he was leaving Oklahoma after two seasons on the Sooners’ staff.

In the blink of an eye, Evans had lost his position coach, the man who had invested copious time and effort into recruiting him to his dream school. But as usual, he didn’t blink — and his patience was rewarded when Oklahoma made a slam-dunk hire in former San Diego State special teams coordinator Doug Deakin.

“He’s barely gotten moved into the dorms at Headington, and Coach is sitting him down and saying [he’s] heading to Alabama,” said Sean. “But he handled it really well. And he just feels really good — like, man, I think [Deakin] really is going to come in and make us better. And I think they’ve got a cool thing going where they’re a tight-knit group, and part of being tight-knit is being willing to push one another to be your best and compete at the highest level that you possibly can. There’s no animosity. These guys are for each other.”

Coach Deakin’s been a great guy. I met him probably a week and a half ago, and everything’s been good so far. He’s gonna do a really good job. I feel like since Coach Deakin came here, you can tell he is dedicated to his job. And he’s really dedicated to making our special teams unit one of the best in the country. So I feel like he’s gonna be a huge asset for us.
— Evans, on his budding relationship with Deakin

Evans echoed that sentiment in his interview session at spring media day. He’ll be in competition with the incumbent Schmit, as well as another experienced leg in Florida State transfer Tyler Keltner. Schmit owns a modest 70 percent career success rate on field-goal attempts, while Keltner is a few ticks higher at 76 percent. Yet although Evans will have more than a puncher’s chance to win the starting job right away, he doesn’t view the elder statesmen in the group as obstacles in that pursuit.

“I’ve known Zach for probably two years now,” said Evans. “He’s been great to me. I talked to him every time I visited here. Our conversations have always been, like, we’re gonna compete. We’re gonna make each other better, which is gonna be better for the team in the end. There has to be competitiveness to improve. It’s only going to make all of us better — me, Tyler and Zach.”

Thirty-three years ago, Blanton had an immovable burden on his shouders as a freshman. As he fired off errant kick after errant kick, the Sooners had no viable alternative. All he could do was keep kicking.

Here in 2024, Evans will face no such gauntlet at Oklahoma. With Schmit and Keltner are on the roster, they’ll provide a runway for Evans to prepare at his own pace. Maybe the gutsy newcomer is ready right away. But if that isn’t the case, Blanton’s glad that Evans will carry no expectation but to compete this fall.

“He’s going to be coming in with veterans ahead of him, with a lot of experience,” Blanton observed. “I think he’ll handle it well. He’ll be ready for it. He will compete. Whether he’s going to redshirt or play, the first couple years is going to be experience-oriented.

“And long-term, the sky’s the limit. I expect him to be starting there, setting some records. I see him doing some great things.”

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[Zgeo]

Nice long article. Existing kicker with a 70% success rate???? IDRT….seems like last season it was low even with short kicks….

In any case i am glad we have the new kicker from Moore HS……….

[Fly]

That,s what we are talking about

Fly

[OU Chinaman]

...kicking game is so, so crucial!
Especially moving to the SEC.
He's an OKLAHOMA kid!
I'm a fan already!