MACON, Ga. – Although it would have been easy to, nobody spoken to Saturday night on the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team was going to dare blame kicker Aaron Sears after the Mocs’ 10-6 loss to Mercer, a defeat that undoubtedly hurts the Mocs’ chances to make the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.
Sears was 0-for-3 on kicks against the Bears, missing field-goal attempts of 41 and 22 yards as well as a PAT. After the first miss on UTC’s first possession, Sears walked behind the bench and worked on kicking into a practice net. After the second – with 57 seconds to go in the third quarter, when a make would have given UTC a 9-7 lead – he stood by himself, with teammates occasionally coming to offer him encouragement.
“We just have to keep supporting him,” offensive lineman McClendon Curtis said. “Every day in practice when we start off doing our good on good and we get to the field-goal portion, we just have to keep encouraging him. He’s human, too. Everybody tries to give specialists a hard time because they just kick the ball, but everybody’s human and as a team we’re going to support and lift him up.”
Entering Saturday’s game, Sears was 12-for-14 from field-goal range and had made all but one of his 33 extra-point attempts this season. His two previous misses on field-goal tries came in the Mocs’ 37-34 overtime loss at Virginia Military Institute on Oct. 9, but he also made two kicks in that game, including one that forced overtime.
The 41-yard miss in Macon was his first from 40 yards or longer this season – he was 4-for-4 prior.