Over the weekend Sandro DeAngelis of the Grey Cup Champion Calgary Stampeders was in Scottsdale, Arizona for One on One Kicking Lesson. Sandro is the CFL's all time field goal percentage (83.9%) leader.Sandro is trying to follow in Mike Vanderjagt's footsteps. Vanderjagt was a Grey Cup Champion and Most Valuable player and so is Sandro. Sandro has so many awards and achievements I don't have enough space on my blog to list them.
In the CFL the field is wider and longer and field position and kicking is very important. There are a couple of differences in rules and strategy. The two differences in field goal kicking is the CFL kickers can use a one inch block to kick their field goals off of and they use wider hash marks like the American College hashes.
Sandro came to Scottsdale to get my opinion on his potential, and to make any changes that he needed to make to kick off the ground and to adjust to the narrower hash marks.
From the start I could see why Sandro was a very accurate kicker. He has a very short approach and a very compact kicking motion. In the photo below you can see how close he starts to the ball. His short approach is something like Matt Stover of the Baltimore Ravens.
One of my first concerns was the elevation on his field goals. After kicking off a one inch tee for the last four years in the CFL, I thought his trajectory was a little low during the first lesson.
During our video review I pointed out a couple of things I had noticed. The slow motion and stop action made everything crystal clear to Sandro.
We talked about some minor adjustments and he agreed try them. In the second lesson we worked hard to address a couple of minor flaws. We started with my warm up progression drill and move to my favorite drill, the One Step drill. In the photo below you can see Sandro working the One Step Drill.
During the Drills we worked on getting his perfect plant directly at his target as you can see in the photo below.
There is a difference in kicking off a one inch tee and kicking off the ground. As I explained to Sandro in my golf analogy, its like hitting a golf ball off a tee or trying to hit it on the ground. Its much easier hitting anything sitting up on tee.
I noticed that Sandro was 'crunching' down which restricted his follow through. During all the drills we worked to eliminate the 'crunching' motion and work up and through the ball as you see in the photo below.
The last thing we addressed, I thought Sandro was kicking a little bit too much out of control. I believe you start on balance and end on balance. In the photo below you see Sandro kicking and ending up down field and on balance.
In the three days of kicking I saw a lot of improvement. Sandro made the minor adjustments he needed to make on kicking off the ground. I told him in two to three weeks he will see even more improvement in his trajectory.
Sandro left Scottsdale very happy with his One on One Lessons. He and his agent (Gil Scott) are looking to get him a couple of tryouts in the next couple of months. Sandro like all Canadian players have until February 15 to make a move to the NFL.
Click below to listen to Calgary Stampeders - Sandro DeAngelis's testimonial working with Coach Zauner.
Sandro was a real pleasure to work with. He was very receptive to coaching and likes to be coached. He gave me excellent feedback during drills which help me analyze and make the proper adjustments which I thought he needed to make. We worked well together and he was a quick fix.
Sandro is very lucky. Being Canadian, he loves living in Canada and loves playing in the CFL. He is playing for the Grey Cup Champs and has many awards and achievements. I wish him the best of luck in trying to secure one of the very precious kicking jobs in the NFL.
