After porous punt coverage last season, the ASU football team has taken the term "special teams" literally.
Last year the Sun Devils ranked 114th in punt coverage.
ASU coach Dirk Koetter made improving that mark a priority in the off-season.
"We can't finish 114th out of 117 teams and go where we want to go," Koetter said. "Hopefully it's better than last year - we can't be much worse."
Koetter has not had to tinker with the kicking game.
Freshman All-American punter Chris MacDonald and placekicker Jesse Ainsworth return.
Placekicker: Junior Jesse Ainsworth returns for his third season as ASU's placekicker. He has a powerful leg, but accuracy has, at times, been a problem.
Ainsworth converted on 18 of 28 field goals last season and all 40 extra points. He has been named to the Lou Groza Collegiate Place-Kicker Award Watch List, given to the nation's top kicker.
With two seasons under his belt, expect Ainsworth's leg to be an asset.
Junior walk-on Mark Merrill will back up Ainsworth. Merrill played soccer last season at Radford University in Virginia.
Punter: Sophomore Chris MacDonald walked on to the team two seasons ago, won a scholarship last season and finished the 2005 campaign as a freshman All-American. He is listed as the 17th-best punter in the nation by the Sporting News and averaged 43.1 yards per punt.
MacDonald's biggest weakness last year was taking too long to get the punt away. He should be faster this season.
Return Men: Terry Richardson, Rudy Burgess and Nate Kimbrough will share time as the punt returners.
Burgess started strong last season, but had trouble playing both special teams and tailback later in the year.
Richardson really came on strong near the end of the season, highlighted by his 176 total return yards against UA.
"Special teams is a time where a lot of teams fall asleep," Richardson said, "and I like to take advantage of that if I can."
Kimbrough redshirted last season, but wowed coaches in the offseason.
"Nate Kimbrough tore up our practice field last year," Koetter said.
Josh Golden will most likely team with Richardson, Kimbrough and Burgess on the kick return team. ASU averaged 22.9 yards per return last year.
Coverage: The biggest special teams question mark for ASU is punt return coverage.
The punt return coverage allowed 18.9 yards per return last season. In contrast, the Sun Devils averaged only 10.2 yards per punt return.
Realizing the weakness, ASU auditioned any and all gunners to improve the unit.
"Punt coverage has been a little bit up and down," Koetter said. "We've worked hard on it and have made a couple changes. We're trying to play to our strengths and hide our weaknesses."
The struggle is a bit puzzling in that ASU was first in the Pac-10 in kickoff coverage, allowing only 17.9 yards per return.
One of the main culprits was MacDonald's strong leg. He would oftentimes out-kick the coverage, leading to big returns. MacDonald has been working on putting more hang time on his kicks to give the team a better chance.
Reach the reporter at kyle.odegard@asu.edu.
