Auburn Football: 2017 will be a big year for Daniel Carlson
By Chris Roush
Here we discuss Auburn football’s fabled kicker, Daniel Carlson, and three reasons his 2017-18 season will be huge.
Although he could have made himself eligible for the 2017 NFL draft, Auburn kicker Daniel Carlson is returning to the Plains for his fourth season of kicking field goals and extra points for the Tigers.
Arguably the team’s most valuable player in 2016, Carlson was the main reason why the Tigers defeated LSU in September, and he scored the team’s only points against rival Alabama.
The kicker has received numerous accolades so far — he’s been named a finalist for the Lou Groza Award as the best college kicker in both 2015 and 2016 and has to be considered the favorite for 2017. In addition, he already holds 12 Auburn records, and he has eight field goals of more than 50 yards already in his three years of kicking.
Carlson has already kicked 69 field goals, and he’s yet to miss a field goal in 141 attempts for the Tigers. Many would already consider him the best kicker in Auburn history.
Here’s three goals for Carlson in 2017 that would garner him Auburn, SEC and national attention:
1. Auburn’s career scoring leader
With 10 more points, Carlson will become Auburn’s all-time leading scorer. He currently has 354 career points, which includes the touchdown that he scored in 2016. That points him nine points behind Wes Byrum, who scored 363 points while kicking for Auburn from 2007 to 2010.
Byrum is best known for kicking game-winning field goals against Arkansas and Florida as a freshman, and then obviously kicking the game-winning field goal against Oregon in the 2010 national championship game. He never played in the NFL, being cut by the Seattle Seahawks in the 2011 training camp.
This is obviously the easiest goal for Carlson to achieve in 2017, and he’s set a bar for his younger brother, who signed with Auburn earlier this year, to shoot for when he takes over the kicking job in 2018.
Look for Carlson to set this record on Sept. 9 on the road against Clemson.
2. SEC’s career scoring leader
With 57 more points, Carlson will become the leading scorer in Southeastern Conference history. The current record holder is Blair Walsh, who kicked for Georgia from 2008 to 2011 and has 412 points and now kicks for the Minnesota Vikings.
Walsh was a model of consistency for the Bulldogs, never scoring more than 109 points in a season and never scoring less than 95 points.
Carlson scored 128 points in 2016, his highest-scoring season so far, which comes up to just less than 10 points per game. At that pace, Carlson would likely set the SEC scoring record on Oct. 7 against Ole Miss at home.
3. Top five all-time NCAA scorer
If Carlson can match his 2016 season and score another 128 points, then he would finish his Auburn career as one of the top five scorers in NCAA football history with 482 points. (The record of 530 points is out of reach.)
At that pace, he’d be the second-highest scorer among NCAA kickers, just behind Zane Gonzalez, who scored 494 points for Arizona State from 2013 to 2016. Carlson would need 141 kicking points during the 2017 season to pass Gonzalez.
Carlson attempted 32 field goals in 2016, which was a record high and five more than he attempted in 2015. Coach Gus Malzahn is comfortable trotting Carlson out onto the field to try anything less than 55 yards
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He’d need to make 33 field goals and 42 extra points to score 141 points in 2017 and pass Gonzalez. He kicked 44 extra points in 2016. With the promise of a higher-scoring offense under quarterback Jarrett Stidham, that goal seems possible.