Last fall, for the second straight season, Sander Sahaydak was benched. The veteran kicker began the season 2-5 on field goal attempts with all three misses from over 40 yards out, and was replaced by former walk-on Ryan Barker.
Barker seized the moment, knocking in a game-winning field goal in overtime of his second-career start against USC and steadied Penn State’s special-teams unit for the rest of the year. Lurking amongst the midseason kicking controversy was first-year transfer Chase Meyer, a redshirt sophomore who began his career at Penn before transferring to Tulsa and then to Happy Valley last offseason.
Meyer remained with the program through his graduation, but on Thursday announced his intention to re-enter the transfer portal in search of his fourth collegiate program, and that’s a great sign for James Franklin’s confidence level in his former walk-on.
Ryan Barker locked in as starting kicker after Chase Meyer's transfer portal departure
Barker kicked extra points through Penn State’s first four games of last season, then took over as the full-time placekicker in Week 5 against UCLA. From that point on, Barker converted on 15 of his 18 field goal attempts, with all three of his misses from over 40 yards out, and one of them from 50+.
Barker made a career-long 49-yard attempt in the final week of the regular season against Maryland and missed just one kick across Penn State’s four postseason games, a 40-yarder in the Big Ten Championship Game loss to Oregon 45-37.
When Sahaydak struggled in 2023, missing his only two field goal attempts of the season, Columbia transfer and then-senior Alex Felkins was able to step in as a one-year solution to the problem, but as a rising redshirt sophomore, Barker is a long-term solution at place-kicker for the Nittany Lions and Meyer seemingly sensed that his opportunity to get on the field had slipped away.
There is little depth behind Barker, with freshman Matthew Parker the only other kicker on the roster heading into Saturday’s Blue-White exhibition, so Franklin could consider adding another to the roster before the season begins, but Barker is the starter, and his emergence, both last year and this offseason, steadies what has been a shaky position group over the past two seasons in Happy Valley.