Leigh Tiffin climbs UA’s career field-goal list

TUSCALOOSA | If you think Leigh Tiffin has never made a pressure kick, it’s time you learned the rest of the story.

A little over two years ago, the University of Alabama’s placekicker from Muscle Shoals drove his right foot into the ball with more than the game on the line. His entire athletic career, his entire legacy, hung in the balance as the ball sailed 42 yards and through the uprights at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

The field goal came in the fourth quarter of the Crimson Tide’s 41-38 victory over Arkansas, the same team that was on the other side a year earlier when Tiffin suffered through a painful-to-watch meltdown as a freshman. In that game, Tiffin missed three field goals — including a would-be game-winner in overtime — and an extra point in a game Alabama lost 24-23.

That game was still haunting Tiffin in 2007 when he marked off his steps with just under 41⁄2 minutes on the clock for the kick that would restore his confidence and mark a turning point in his career.

“There’s one kick my whole career hinged on,” Tiffin said. “Looking back on it, if I missed that kick I probably wouldn’t have played any more.

“I was in a slump. I had the bad game against Arkansas the year before. I started off good and had that game, and that game affected my confidence the first three games of that next year.

“If I missed that kick, I’m probably 50 percent on the year and I might not have ever climbed out of that hole.”

The kick was good, setting up a touchdown pass with 8 seconds to go that won the game for Alabama.

“To me, that’s the biggest kick,” he said. “It was absolutely a pressure situation, but to me it wasn’t just the pressure of the game. It was like a personal pressure, like everything sort of hinged on that play. Making it, I was able to put that game (from his freshman year) and that experience behind me.

“Ever since then, I’ve been a lot better kicker.”

Fast forward two years and now Tiffin, a senior, is the leading scorer in the Southeastern Conference. He has made 14 of 16 field-goal attempts, ranking him third in the nation in field goals at a rate of 2.33 per game. In last weekend’s 22-3 victory over Ole Miss, he was a perfect 5-for-5, setting a career high.

“I’ve tried five a couple of times, but never connected on all of them,” he said. “I try to take the attitude that if I’m kicking field goals at all then something bad happened on offense. I guess ideally you want to kick extra points, but that’s what I’m here for. I don’t mind doing it.”

Tiffin has risen to No. 2 on Alabama’s career field-goal list with 67 made kicks, passing his father, Van Tiffin, earlier this season. He is only 12 field goals short of Philip Doyle’s all-time mark at UA.

Ranking so high on the Alabama career list, or leading the SEC in scoring, doesn’t shock Tiffin.

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “We’ve tried a lot of kicks. We’ve scored tons of points on offense.”

Since missing two extra points against North Texas in Alabama’s third game of the season, Tiffin has made six straight field goal attempts and is a perfect 10-for-10 on point-after kicks.

About those two missed extra points: Tiffin rushed through his approach both times, arriving at the ball before holder P.J. Fitzgerald could get Brian Selman’s snap in place.

“Had some bad timing, rhythm-tempo things with the snap-hold,” Tiffin said. “I was a little fast. It was my fault.”

When something goes wrong with Tiffin’s kicking, it’s usually a technical problem.

“I think the big thing with Leigh is when he stays technically in his zone, he’s pretty consistent,” Alabama head coach Nick Saban said. “Almost every time he misses one, it’s because of something he did wrong. It’s kind of like my golf swing. When I rotate my elbow out and get that club laid off, I hit some really good slices. I mean some that go in the record book. If I can get that right, I can hit straight.

“We all have those issues, but he’s a done a pretty good job all year long, and when he’s missed, it’s been for a reason. When he loses his focus a little bit he loses his technique, but other than that he has done an outstanding job for us.”

Unlike his freshman problems at Arkansas, the North Texas mistakes didn’t jostle Tiffin’s confidence.

“It’s one of those freak things, but we got it fixed,” Tiffin said. “We knew it. We pretty much took those two plays and threw them away. Basically I just decided I wasn’t going to even think about it at all. It wasn’t going to do me any good. I just take the lesson and throw away the mistake.

“I’ve been on a little bit of a streak since then. You get confident, you’re going out there and getting into a rhythm and you expect to look up and everything to be good.

“I don’t want to sound cocky or arrogant, but I just have so much more confidence in my ability than I’ve ever had. Like anything, it’s experience — the longer you do it the better you’re going to get.”

Reach Tommy Deas at tommy.deas@tuscaloosanews.com or at 205-722-0224.