OK, everybody that keeps claiming we need a dedicated ST coach or coordinator, you need to think through the process of a practice.
All of your ST players other than K, P, LS and possibly holder are either on the offense or defense 2-deep, and if they are not they are doing scout stuff for the offense and defense. Meanwhile the K, P, LS and H are off on their own for most of practice getting reps. What do you want a ST coach to do? Stand there and watch the K, P and LS? Because the chances he has some magical trick to see and fix a mechanics issue is fairly small. Most of these kickers have been to camps and things with actual experts in kicking, which typically ST coaches are not.
So you want a guy to watch ST film, scout, gameplan and scheme for ST? That's exactly what Bonamego does, and his credentials suggest he should at the very least be competent in those areas.
In the biggest areas of blunders that coaching can help - kick coverage and punt blocking, those have pretty much been terrible lane integrity or poor pickups by the punt protection group. I assure you that no coach's plan/scheme at any level of football ever was what we saw in the Louisiana game, which was to have 4 or 5 guys with first day of junior high practice lane integrity.
The bottom line is a vast majority of our ST problems have come down to stuff that a better, smarter, dedicated coach is going to probably have a tough time fixing without a change to get more ST reps. Unless they cut into offense/defense time to get players more reps on special teams, those things aren't changing. You're probably not going to coach a kicker out of missing kicks. You aren't going to scheme your way to better coverage or punt protection without reps.
As Campbell says, you can't minor in what ISU does defensively. It's complicated and takes a **** ton of reps. I bet big money that compared to most programs our defense: special teams reps ratio in practice is through the roof. And it's really hard to get good ST reps without them being at the expense of offense and definitely defense. The way you can potentially do it is with a bunch of 3rd and 4th string guys, but that doesn't work very well, either in games or get you remotely close to real game speed reps.
