Last weekend, former Idaho State punter Gabe Russo banged two punts of over 50 yards for Pitt, in the Panthers’ win over Miami of Ohio.

Ex-Bengal Trajan Sinatra nailed field goals of 45 and 49 yards to give his San Jose State squad the margin of victory in a 27-21 win over Eastern Michigan, on his way to earning Mountain West special teams player of the week honors.

ISU expatriate kicker Gabe Panikowski booted a 46-yard field goal in Florida State’s 27-24 loss to SMU.

And current Idaho State kicker Mason Lindberg was going a perfect 5-for-5 in field goal attempts as the Bengals upset FBS Utah State, 29-17, in Logan, on his way to Big Sky Conference special teams player of the week.

If you put all of those performances together, past and current Bengal kickers were a perfect 8-for-8 on field goals, including 6-for-6 from 40 yards and beyond. Russo, meanwhile, would be leading the nation in punting if he’d had enough attempts to qualify.

Take a bow, Bengal special teams coaches, you’re not only populating the transfer portal with high-quality kickers, but you’re continuing to find, train and develop highly productive kickers to replace those one-and-dones.

Since those special teams guys rarely get noticed, here’s a roll call of the coaches who are in charge with not only finding and preparing kickers, but also the long snappers and holders who are vital to the process: Scott Thiessen, special teams coordinator; Dan Hawkins, specialist coach; Scott Atkinson, special teams assistant coach; and Kenton Bartlett, special teams analyst.

“There’s a big group effort that goes into the development of those guys,” said Thiessen.

But it all begins in finding the right athletes to fill those roles. Pretty much since he arrived at Idaho State in late 2022, head coach Cody Hawkins and his staff have been able to find and develop productive kickers. Three of them — Panikowski, Sinatra and Russo — have chosen to ride the wave of their success to enter the transfer portal and move on to what they perceive to be bigger and better opportunities.

Hawkins is confident that his program can always find good kickers and punters — who wouldn’t want to kick indoors much of the season, at altitude, for a program with a history of sending good kickers and punters on to bigger programs?

But he’s insistent he won’t sign a specialist until Thiessen works out the recruit personally and signs off on him.

“The thing I’ve noticed and learned in the last three to five years is if I don’t have eyes on them, then it’s probably not somebody I’m going to really invest in,” Thiessen said.

To earn an audition with Thiessen, there are some baseline standards you need to meet: punters generally need to average about 45 yards a kick, with a hang time of about 4.5 seconds. Kickers need to be 90% to 95% accurate within 40 yards, and have the leg to make kicks from 50 yards and beyond.

“But there’s so much outside of just the physical ability to kick,” Thiessen notes. “We often correlate kicking to golf and how much of a mental game it can be. I’ve seen guys when I’ve gone out that I’m really interested in, but when you go see them in person — whether it’s the pressure of having a singular coach watching just you for a workout that gets in their head — I’ve had guys that I’ve walked away from because they can’t handle that.”

Identifying the right athletes is just the beginning of the process. Then Idaho State is stringent about working their special teams into the context of practice. If you’ve been to an ISU workout, you’ll notice they are frequently running the punt or field goal team onto the field right in the middle of a scrimmage in order to replicate the real-life situations the specialists will face in games.

“We’re always trying to get a game-winning field goal atmosphere throughout the course of practice,” Thiessen noted. “Whether that’s just setting up a game winner, or going speed field goal. So, there’s a bunch of things that we’ve done structurally within practice to give those guys the best chance of success on Saturday and during the game.”

Lindberg is an interesting aberration in the development of ISU kickers. Both Panikowski and Sinatra arrived in Pocatello with junior college experience, and both adapted quickly to the Division I environment. Panikowski was a perfect 15-for-15 in field goal attempts in his only season in Pocatello. Sinatra made 18-for-22 attempts, including a 56-yarder last year, before heading back to his native northern California.

But Lindberg, who is from Mesa, Arizona, arrived as a walk-on right out of high school. He fought for, and earned, the job as the Bengals’ kickoff specialist, but he struggled with accuracy in his field goal kicking and couldn’t beat out either Panikowski or Sinatra for the placekicking job.

Instead of transferring or walking away from the game, Lindberg fought the good fight and earned the placekicking job this season — and so far, he’s off to a perfect start.

“He’s gone through the times throughout the course of practice in his first two years where he hasn’t been very successful,” said Thiessen. “I knew he had the physical talent and the big leg to do some of those things. Him working through the mental aspect — you saw it play out on Saturday, where he was able to put it all together. Now the challenge for him is getting all the attention and success — can you handle that? Time will tell what that looks like through the rest of the season.”

While it looks like Thiessen and company have answered the placekicking question this season, they are still struggling with getting the punting situation up to speed. Newcomers Jordan Rucker and Sam Buck have each taken turns punting and, while they haven’t been awful, they haven’t produced the kind of numbers Bengal punters are known for. It will be interesting to watch their development as the season goes on.

But one thing is certain — neither Lindberg’s early successes, nor the punters’ early struggles, will have any bearing on how Thiessen and his coaches prepare them for the rest of the season.

“We talk about just being able to flush it,” said Thiessen. “No matter what happens, good or bad, you’ve gotta be able to flush that last rep and get your mind ready, get your body ready for the next one. You look at the Utah State game as a prime example. Mason is getting a lot of the credit, a lot of the accolades and rightly so. When you look at the flip side of that, our punt game didn’t have a great day. But how they did on Saturday against Utah State has nothing to do with how they’re going to perform this week against San Diego.”

And if the recent history of how Thiessen and his coaches prepare their special teams is any indication, we can expect both phases of the kicking game to be among the best in the Big Sky by the end of the season.

Brad Bugger has been observing athletics in southeastern Idaho since 1979 as a sports writer, broadcaster and fan. He can be reached at bpbugger@gmail.com.