Ben Sauls finds success as Pitt's kicker after realizing 'it's you against you'

Anyone wondering what makes a kicker great — or what might put his head and toe slightly off center — should spend some time with Andre Powell.

He has been instructing, counseling and offering his shoulder to kickers since 2004, when he was on the coaching staff at North Carolina. He has held that position for 19 consecutive years at North Carolina, Clemson, Maryland and Pitt, the better part of his 35-year coaching career.

In all four stops, Powell has performed double duty as running backs and special teams coach. At Pitt — where he has been with Pat Narduzzi through all eight seasons — he has helped Izzy Abanikanda lead the ACC in rushing. He also works with special team personnel, including kicker Ben Sauls, a sophomore who has made good on 10 of 13 field-goal attempts, the past five in a row and 33 extra points without a miss.

Powell has worked with the two most prolific kick scorers in Pitt history. Chris Blewitt is second in all-time scoring to Tony Dorsett (363 points), and Alex Kessman is third (341).

So far, Powell likes what he has seen from Sauls, who has run a gauntlet of emotions in two Pitt seasons.

Awarded a scholarship in the class of 2020, Sauls lost a training camp competition last season to Sam Scarton, a walk-on at the time, before winning the job this summer.

“From the time he got here until now, he’s really grown up. He’s really matured,” Powell said. “Some of the peripheral things don’t bother him, things that used to bother him. He just focuses on doing his job.”

Sauls knows how to approach his business so well that Powell never talks to him about his daily and game-day routines.

“After they mature and get to where he is, I just let them do what they need to do. He’s hitting field goals pretty good so I don’t add my two cents.”

Said Sauls: “I’m very self-motivated. The kicking position, it’s you against you.”

In two seasons, however, Sauls has received two “kicks in the butt.”

The first occurred in 2021 when Scarton won the job after Sauls missed two extra points in the New Hampshire game.

“You have to go through stuff like that,” Sauls said. “When you get through that, it sharpens you. Just like Tennessee, another sharpening tool for me.”

In that game earlier this season, Sauls missed two field goals in the third quarter. Pitt lost in overtime.

“My leg stayed open, didn’t finish. Kind of scared to miss,” he said.

Since then, he said he has developed a different approach. “I’m trying just to kick it through the uprights, just finish through the ball.”

It’s not unlike a baseball player who takes a full cut.

“You want to get your weight through it,” he said. “Not really worry about where it goes, because if I aim down my line and hit the ball clean, it’s going to finish down my line.

“Unfortunately, that game went the way it was, but you can only learn from that. You learn from your misses more than your makes.”

In the past six games, Sauls has been nearly perfect (7 of 8), the lone miss coming from 27 yards at Western Michigan.

“You are what you tell yourself,” he said. “I think I’m pretty decent at what I do. To be honest, I think I’m really good at what I do.”

But there is also reality, and Sauls gets that, too.

“Having a guy like Sam, another kick in the butt. You keep missing field goals, there’s a guy who can do it.”

Sauls, 21, was a freshman soccer player at Tippecanoe High School in Tipp City, Ohio, when he was approached about joining the football team. He ended up first-team all-state, hitting field goals from 55 and 49 yards in one game.

“I was always told I was pretty decent. I always believed in myself, and here we are today,” he said.

“When I got here, I thought I was tough and it took a bunch of failures to realize, ‘Hey, man, maybe you’re not the guy you thought you were.’

“Positive self-talk is extremely important. It’s deep thinking. It’s a lot of self-reflection. It’s a lot of time by yourself.

“At the end of the day, you only have to live with one person, and it’s yourself. When you miss, they don’t like it. When you make it, they love it. There really is no in between.”