EUGENE -- It was just after 9 a.m. Tuesday when a 6-foot tall speaker on Oregon's football practice fields blared notice that practice's next period had begun.



"Oklahoma," it said, and on command, the Ducks ran to a second field and formed a semicircle to watch the full-contact blocking drill.



A few yards from where linemen popped pads to guttural yells of approval, kickers Aidan Schneider and Zach Emerson set up kicking tees by themselves. With fluid, easy swings, they launched balls, back and forth, from 40 yards away, trading kicks and maybe a word or two of advice.



The solitude was business as usual. Oregon's punters, kickers and long snappers have spent much of UO's spring workouts by themselves, by design. Without a dedicated position coach, they become their own. To be clear, this isn't Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Said punter Blake Maimone: "They definitely keep an eye on us."

All spring, coach Willie Taggart has sought to infuse practices with as many "game-like" scenarios as possible to gauge players' response under pressure, and the specialists' arrangement reflects that. On game days, specialists typically cluster together on the sideline, waiting for their handful of turns to take the field. It's the same in practice, where Taggart likes to spring field-goal attempts under pressure, like a pop quiz. At the conclusion of an April 15 scrimmage at Jesuit High School, the entire team formed a screaming, distracting circle around a kicker -- whose number was blocked from view due to all the commotion -- who made the kick to a rowdy reception fit for the Oklahoma drill.

"You never know when we're going to need one of those guys to win a ballgame for us," Taggart said. "We try to create those situations for our guys in a game-like situations."



But outside of those moments, specialists have enjoyed increased freedom this spring to decide what they practice and how often.



"For us, it's just a lot of mental things," said Emerson, a 6-foot-2, 216-pound redshirt freshman from Bend. "And a lot of stretching."



The arrangement allows more leeway than ever, yet it isn't a radical departure from how they, or their counterparts across the country, were handled in recent seasons.



"A lot of specialists, you'll find from talking to them around the country, they have a similar situation," said Schneider, whose 87.5 percent accuracy on field goals is ninth-best among career leaders in the Football Bowl Subdivision.



"They're coaching themselves and coaching each other. Everyone knows -- even the snappers know -- a thing or two about kicking, so between that you pretty much have everything covered."





For more than a decade, Oregon's kickers and punters worked with head strength and conditioning coach Jim Radcliffe during practice on technique and flexibility and special teams coordinator Tom Osborne afterward, in meetings. Osborne was not retained under new coach Willie Taggart in December, and Radcliffe's role with the football program was reduced in January.



That's generally the same arrangement UO's specialists have now. Special teams coordinator Raymond Woodie and analyst Chris Norris typically debrief with specialists after practice about hand placement on punt drops, footwork and the like. During practice, Woodie works with linebackers outside of special teams coverage drills. Norris is sometimes out at practice to offer guidance, but otherwise, the specialists set their schedule.

"I wouldn't say they're off on their own," Taggart said, "but specialists are a little different and they need that time, kind of like golfers and pitchers in baseball."



Is it pretty laid back?



"Yeah," Emerson said.



With the pros come cons. Mistakes in kicking often boil down to tiny differences in form from kick to kick, and "sometimes it's so small that it's really hard for you to notice when you're messing it up," Schneider said. "It's really helpful to have that person from an outside perspective watching every day."



That "little bit of frustration," Schneider felt, is outweighed by the freedom afforded by the coaches' trust in the specialists to get their work done.



"It definitely helps me keep my body feeling better rather than have a structured practice plan," Schneider said. "If there's a day I'm feeling really good I can kick more and if I'm not feeling so good I can kind of lay off."



For punters, one area of work has been rugby-style punting, in which they roll to one side after the snap and kick on the run, allowing the coverage team a hair longer to get downfield -- which is important for a punt coverage unit that ranked 113th last season in net punting.



And by virtue of his unusual physical gifts, Adam Stack needs a lot of practice reps, too. Stack, a 6-foot-2, 178-pound true freshman from Honolulu, can punt and kick with both feet. 247Sports.com ranked Stack the 12th-ranked kicker in the class of 2017, and the ninth-best kicker and fourth-best punter by Chris Sailer, the guru of high school specialist recruiting.



"Adam's a unique individual," Taggart said. "It's the first time I've been around a punter who can punt with both his right and left foot. That's pretty unique and allows you to be pretty creative on special teams."



The atmosphere can appear relaxed, but there's an undercurrent of competition beneath specialists' easygoing practice routine.



Just as at other positions, all special teams jobs are open, and with the departure of three-year starters Ian Wheeler and Matt Wogan, UO will have a new starters on punts and kickoffs, respectively. Maimone has worked with the first team primarily on punts. Three years ago, he was a high school senior in Thousand Oaks, California, expecting to be named starting quarterback. When he wasn't, he was "pretty devastated in that moment."



Then he embraced kicking full-time, and at 6-foot-6, he's literally got a big leg. But it won't mean anything, he said, if he doesn't put in the work.



There is a keen understanding that if few are watching the specialists this spring, everyone in Autzen Stadium will be on game days.



"Oregon is a top school," Maimone said. "You can always find someone to come in if they're not willing to do the work."



-- Andrew Greif

agreif@oregonian.com

@andrewgreif