BYU Football Countdown: Player No. 93
By Adam Gibby
No. 93 Owen Pochman – Kicker – 1996-2000
In our Top 100 Countdown we will feature only two field goal kickers one of whom is Owen Pochman and the other one you can probably guess if you know BYU Football well enough.
Owen Pochman is one of those players that you have to sort of wonder why he wasn’t the full time place kicker his entire career. He arrived to BYU in 1996 and only had one kickoff but was allowed to take a redshirt. In his sophomore season he kicked one field goal and handled most if not all of the extra point attempts. It wasn’t until his redshirt sophomore season that he took over all the kicking responsibilities for the team for the next three years.
Despite only being the kicker for three seasons, Pochman owns all kinds of BYU records BY FAR including field goal attempts (91), field goal makes (66) and longest field goal (56).
Rankings
Impact: B+
As mentioned before, he kicked a lot of field goals and was able to make them from deep. Some of his other deep kicks include 50 yards, multiple 47 yarders and more than a dozen beyond 40 yards. And he did all of that at a 73% rate, including 82% his senior year. In other words, if the Cougars got to the 35 yard line they were thinking about three points. That is an impact because instead of having to try to convert a 3rd down and 15 from the 40, the Cougars would only have to dump off a pass pick of five to eight yards and then feel comfortable sending out the field goal unit. It has been a long time since that has happened for BYU.
Statistics A-
The 82% rate his senior season is amazing and Pochman to this day holds the record for second best percentage in a season. Pochman is also second all time in points scored (333). The 56 yard field goal is a statistic that we hope is broken soon, but to this day is being held by three yards. Pochman also converted on 96.2% of his extra point attempts. To sum it all up, his statistics were pretty dang good.
Memorable Moments D+
It is going to be tough for kickers to score high on this unless they have game winners. That is the life of a kicker. If you do your job nobody remembers you. If you miss everyone remembers. Fortunately and unfortunately for Pochman, during his career BYU didn’t win or lose a lot of close games. Pochman only kicked two game winning field goals, and only one was a true game winner against Virginia in 2000. The long 56 yard kick will be remembered, but that is about all for him.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
So that gives us one kicker, one long snapper, a defensive back, two quarterbacks, linebacker and a tight end.
If you missed any of other other days here they all are!