Big Ten Player of the Week: Emmit Carpenter, special teams rockstar

Emmit Carpenter was just named Big Ten Special Teams Player of the Week.

This should shock exactly none of us given his performance on Saturday. This is Carp’s send B1G POTW award since taking over kicking duties this fall.

It’s easy to take a performance like Emmit’s for granted, but what he did on Saturday doesn’t happen often (via Gopher Sports):

The only other kicker in program history to hit two 50-yarders in a game was Adam Bailey when he connected from 52 and 50 yards versus Penn State in 1997. Carpenter is just the second FBS kicker this season with two or more 50-yard field goals in a game. Zane Gonzalez of Arizona State has accomplished the feat twice.

It’s not just the number of long kicks that was impressive, the length of his career high was as well:

The 53-yarder is a career high and if tied for the seventh-longest in program history and is the longest since Joel Monroe’s 54-yarder at Iowa in 2007.

Emmit is well deserving of his Groza Award semi-final status and if he keeps this up, expect him to end up on the finalists list soon.