Exclusive: An Inside Look at Brock Taylor’s Kicking Preparation – Sports Illustrated

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Vanderbilt kicker Brock Taylor starts his Saturday with a coffee shortly after he wakes up before he turns on the tv to watch “College Gameday” on ESPN. Unlike some special teams players, Taylor does not have any superstitions on the day of games, but rather likes to treat it as a normal, chill Saturday before his day gets busy.
Once at the stadium, though, Taylor does not waste time locking in. He puts his headphones on and listens to music as he warms up for Vanderbilt’s game that day. In the game of football, any given Saturday could be the day a kicker has one of the most important kicks of his career. In some situations, the fate of a team’s season could be dependent on whether a kicker strikes one through the uprights or not.
But before the day of the game arrives, Taylor goes through thorough preparation with Vanderbilt special team coordinator Jeff LePak and assistant special teams coordinator Shane Gallant.
Of course, it all starts with hitting the practice field on Vanderbilt’s campus, about a three-minute walk to FirstBank Stadium. With an iPad in his kicking bag for every practice, Taylor and the coaching staff film every kick – make or miss. Every kick attempt filmed gets sent straight into a shared album between the specialists. Then comes the dissection of each rep.
“So, we'll sit down, and when I tell you, good kick or bad kick, we'll go through each rep from that day slow mo and critique every piece of it,” Taylor told Vandy On SI. “We really do, which I really enjoy because Coach LePak and Coach Gallant, neither of them have specialist backgrounds and they’ve learned a ton throughout their time coaching specs. For me, I sit there and I ask them just as many questions as I would ask a trainer that’s outside the program.”
Taylor has as good of a relationship a player can have with his position coaches. Taylor, LePak and Gallant are all transparent with each other on their analysis of Taylor’s film, whether it is pleasing feedback or not. It has played a major role in Taylor’s development as a kicker. 
At the end of the film session, Taylor always remembers to jot down the biggest points of improvement going into the next game.
From a coaching perspective, LePak described to Vandy On SI what he looks for on Taylor’s film that he shows his kicker. There are a few components to Taylor’s kicking technique LePak breaks down: his kicking line, the steps he takes, the swing of his leg and the angle of his foot that Taylor hits the ball with.
Ideally, LePak is looking to see if Taylor’s kicking line is a straight, vertical line toward the goalposts. But perhaps even more so, the steps Taylor takes are crucial. Everything from the length of Taylor’s strides in his first two steps to where his plant leg is in relation to the football as he kicks is looked at and analyzed in the film room.
Then, the more obvious things to analyze are the type of contact his foot makes with the ball and the quality of his swinging leg as he winds up and kicks.
No kicker is going to be perfect in practice. Every kicker is going to miss just as every basketball player is going to miss free throws and just like every pitcher in baseball is going to have rough innings. When it comes to Taylor’s misses, LePak is not necessarily celebratory about them, but there are still lessons that can be learned and applied because of it.
“Yeah I think so. I think there's also mistakes that you can try and over-correct, too. There's times that a kicker is going to miss a kick, and if you can go back and you can look at, ‘Hey, this was your line. Hey, this is your ball contact.’ Those are always good teaching moments,” LePak told Vandy On SI. “Sometimes they hit a ball really, really clean and it just takes a little bit of a weird departure angle, and it just goes straight out outside the upright, or something like that. You don't want to over coach those too much.”
Another important aspect that goes into Taylor’s routine and his preparation is his frame. Depending on how bulky or skinny a kicker is, he is either going to be quad-dominant when he kicks or he will be more hip-dominant, moving the body weight into the swing of an attempt to kick.
For Taylor, it is not hard to notice his skinny, 6-foot-1, 165-pound frame. Compared to his Vanderbilt teammates, Taylor is much smaller of an athlete that almost seems out of place in the game of football. But just because he has a smaller frame compared to your average college football athlete does not make him any less of a threat when he steps onto the field.
Taylor compared his hip-dominant kicking swing to what people may see out of Jacksonville Jaguars kicker Cam Little. Little is nearly identical in size and body build to Taylor. Little is the same height as Taylor and just seven pounds heavier. Also like what Taylor is capable of on a college field, Little has done in the NFL. During the 2025 NFL preseason, Little hit a 70-yard field goal.
With a hip-dominant swing. Taylor's hip starts with facing to the sideline to his right and moves to pointing where he is aiming for, which is inevitably in between the two uprights. For a kicker Taylor’s size, it is all focused on using their lengthy limbs in a full body motion to put the ball through the goalpost.
The hip-dominant strategy has clearly worked for Taylor throughout his career. His career long at Vanderbilt is from 57 yards out, which is also the program record.
“It's something that I think you're seeing a lot more often, and it's worked for me really well. And I think it's a lot easier to not necessarily strain all your specific muscles in your legs, and it's a lot easier for me to get a lot of whip and speed through the ball when I'm more hip-dominant rather than quad,” Taylor said.
Taylor treats every Saturday Vanderbilt plays as just another Saturday during the free time that he has. Though he is not as talkative at the stadium pregame, he does take time to text friends and family about what everyone has going on for the day before eventually taking a few deep breaths and beginning to mentally prepare for the task at hand.
When the game kicks off, Taylor is in game mode just like everyone else on the Vanderbilt roster. When he is not on the field kicking field goals, he still tries to make an impact on the game by being a cheerleader for his teammates on the sidelines, always uplifting them.
Eventually, Vanderbilt’s offense will get into field goal range at some point during the game. Taylor has spent a portion of this spring practicing field goals from 60 to 65 yards out, so Vanderbilt would not have to go more than a few yards past midfield for Taylor to feel good about his chances.
Once he trots out onto the field for an attempt, thoughts of doubt never run through his head. He has an understanding of how kicking works that does not make a kick in a singular moment too big for the bigger picture meaning. Taylor has always compared kicking in football to golf. Yes, there is difficulty in the physical actions a player must do, but there is a mental side that is just as, if not, more important than the job of kicking itself.
“If you want to play at a high level in this sport, specifically in this position, you have to understand that not everything's always going to go your way, and I think that's honestly the beauty of it,” Taylor said.
Taylor recalled to Vandy On SI his game against Missouri in the 2024 season. Taylor missed a field goal that would have given Vanderbilt a 23-20 lead with three minutes remaining over a No. 7 Missouri team. In double overtime, Taylor missed a 31-yard field goal that would have tied the game and extended it to triple overtime. A couple days after that night, Taylor called Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea checking in with him, seemingly already moved on from his performance in the previous game.
“I remember calling coach Lea and asking him if he was good and he was like, ‘Yeah, are you good?’ And I just remember thinking of it, and telling my parents it would be a seriously soft mindset to let this affect anything about my week. I still need to be a good friend, a good son, a good brother, good student, a good teammate. And so, on the mental side of things, I just think you have to be willing to understand that you have to take some things on the chin,” Taylor said.
Any athlete knows that there is going to be criticisms, critiques and maybe even worse, comments said about players that make crucial mistakes and fail to capitalize in the most important moments. Depending on the position an athlete plays, it could be a little easier to not bear as much responsibility for a costly error. But for kickers, there is no way of hiding. The burden of responsibility is exclusively on a kicker assuming the snap and holding operations are par for the course.
Instead of being caught up in the negative what if scenarios, Taylor accepts that trials happen. Missed field goals will happen, blocked field goals will happen and there are just days where nothing goes right.
Not only does he accept that reality, he leans into it. Not that he could not care less if he misses, but if he does miss, he embraces those moments as opportunities to grow mentally so that when those same situations inevitably arise in the future, he will be ready the next time around.
The origin of his mentality is a mix of environmental factors that have surrounded him throughout his life. From his parents to the competitive mindset he was born with to the coaches he has had kicking growing up, Taylor has learned so much from the people around him.
Perhaps the most important lesson he has learned along the way came in high school. When he would miss a kick at camp or during training, he would let his upset feelings from the miss affect the next few attempts, which only made the situation worse. That is when his coach at the time confronted him about it and was honest with Taylor.
“That just cannot happen. It’s good you want to succeed, but there’s going to be another kick,” Taylor’s coach told him.
Since that moment, it gave Taylor a new perspective to kicking: accepting that perfection is an impossible bar to reach, so just control what you can control.
“That is why I compare it to golf, a lot. There's always another shot, there's always another kick, and so I think just learning from the people above me and having humility in the situation. I understand that I'm not perfect, and I won't ever be perfect, but it is in my control to be the best I can be,” Taylor told Vandy On SI. “I think I get super appetized at the fact that there's always room to get better, and whenever I do miss, I just feel like I can't wait for the next kick rather than when I was in high school and I'd get frustrated about it.”
The drive to get better and the drive to convert on the next opportunity is something that Taylor has an unending sense of hunger for. He is obsessed, in a good way, with being as successful of a kicker he can be.
As much as there is to compare golf and kicking in football, there is one difference that LePak pointed out that separates the two sports. In golf, players know when they first step onto the course and when they finish. In kicking, there is no way to tell when the first extra point or field goal attempt will be. It could be at some point in the first half, or it may not be until the final seconds of the game for a kick that holds the result of the game on the foot of the kicker.
It requires kickers like Taylor to stay locked into a game despite him watching from the sidelines. But when the moment comes, all the time and effort a kicker puts into his preparation, technique, film analysis and mentality suddenly is thrown into the spotlight. The next time that time arrives for Taylor, there is no doubt he will feel ready.
“Brock is taking great strides in his process about how he goes about his business day in and day out, not only for practices but even for games. His process seems to be getting more and more dialed in, and I think you're seeing a result of that more than anything else,” LePak told Vandy On SI.
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Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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