A lot of people have wondered how BYU kicker Will Ferrin stayed so cool, calm and collected before he booted the 44-yard field goal to beat Utah 22-21 in the rivalry game Saturday night at Rice-Eccles Stadium as tens of thousands of Utes fans screamed at the top of their lungs.
Ferrin’s father, Jim, was not among them. He had seen it many times before.
“I guess I was feeling pretty confident, because I know that 44 (yards) is well within his range and he has such a cool head that he doesn’t let the pressure get to him that badly,” Jim Ferrin told the Deseret News Monday. “It can be stressful because you realize the whole game comes down to this kick, but to be honest, I felt pretty confident that it was going to go through.”
And it did with three seconds left on the clock, keeping the 9-0 Cougars’ perfect season intact and touching off some wild celebrations from the thousands of BYU fans in the stands as Utah backers looked on in disbelief.
“It was pretty crazy. It was a very tense and stressful game, and it looked like we were going to lose the game and break our winning streak, and then miracles happen and of course it has been pretty awesome since then,” Jim Ferrin said.
Noted head coach Kalani Sitake: “Will was as cool as could be.”
Jim Ferrin said his son has mostly been that way for years, although that wasn’t often the case when he was a toddler.
The youngest of Jim and Margo Ferrin’s five children, Will was so temperamental when he was a toddler that his family called him “Jack-Jack” — the name of the small child in the movie “The Incredibles” who turned red and fiery when he was upset.
“He was probably our most difficult child starting out,” Jim said. “Then he became a very easy teenager, and ultimately the very sweet, modest, humble young man that he is who works diligently on his craft.”
It was a transformation that was, well, incredible.
So much so that when Will was a teenager, he wouldn’t even allow swearing in his car.
His car was known as the “no swearing zone,” Jim said, and foul language was not permitted — even after a rare missed kick, a shanked punt, or a loss by the Davis Darts, Will’s high school team growing up in Kaysville.
“Those who know him would agree that he is an exceedingly special, well-rooted, well-grounded person. He has a good foundation under him,” Jim said. “He was a good, positive influence for many of his friends. … He is the one that gave great emotional support to his friends when they were going through personal crises in high school.”
Becoming rooted in the rivalry
After he made the field goal that gave BYU its second-straight win over the Utes, the kicker said an “8-year-old Will Ferrin would be hyped, for sure, probably more than I am showing it right now.”
There wasn’t much of a reaction from Will when the ball split the uprights with plenty of distance to spare. He just flashed a smile and invited his holder, punter Sam Vander Haar, and snapper, Dalton Riggs, to celebrate with him.
“It was cool to share that moment with all the guys on that field goal team. We have had a lot of buy-in from that group,” he said. “It is cool to have everyone be a part of it.”
Quarterback Jake Retzlaff had driven BYU into field goal range in the final minutes with no timeouts, and Ferrin credited the entire offense for getting the special teams unit into field-goal range.
“I turned around, found No. 44, and ran off the field and said, ‘Go get it, baby,’ and he did,” Retzlaff said. “We have so much confidence in No. 44 to go out there and do his thing.”
In the postgame news conference, Will said his “first football memory” was his father explaining the BYU-Utah football rivalry to him, so it was appropriate that he was able to celebrate the win on the field with his father and brothers, two of which played lacrosse for BYU.
The rivalry was such a big part of his childhood, he said, that when there was a substitute teacher in elementary school, he would raise his hand first thing and ask if they were a Utah fan or a BYU fan. He’s now part of rivalry lore.
“I feel like I am part of Cougar Nation now,” he said. “It is cool to see BYU win this game, and be in that role where I can do my job, do my part.”
There is a reason Retzlaff calls him “Big Game Bill.”
Getting a kick out of soccer
Before Will was an accomplished kicker and punter in high school — the Darts were so bad his junior season that he punted 67 times, his father said — he was an outstanding soccer player, which is often the case with college kickers.
“Soccer was his life,” Jim said. “He found he had a really good leg in soccer, and when it was time to do corner kicks, it was frequently Will they called upon to do that because of his ability to place the ball. It wasn’t really until high school that he got serious kicking footballs.”
Jim said the family had moved to Kaysville, and Will was kicking on a side field adjacent to Davis High’s main field when an adult associated with the football program saw him kick and invited him to try out for the varsity team. He became the school’s starting punter and kicker the next three years.
“He was really good at both (kicking and punting), but by the time he was out of high school he decided he wanted to be a kicker,” Jim said. “A lot more fun to kick for points.”
And kick game-winning field goals.
Before the Cougars, there were the Broncos
As he previously told the Deseret News, Ferrin was such a big BYU fan growing up that he would tape pictures of former BYU kickers such as Justin Sorensen, Jonny Linehan and Skyler Southam on a wall in his bedroom.
But the player he most idolized was quarterback Peyton Manning, and the NFL team he loved was the Denver Broncos. He had a cousin who worked as a strength coach for the Broncos, and he was able to go into the locker room after some Broncos games and meet players and take pictures with them.
But his zealous fandom also left him with some major disappointment. Jim said that a young Will was so excited before the Super Bowl in 2014 pitting the Broncos and Seattle Seahawks that he decorated the recreation room in his house with Broncos stuff, including a huge hand-painted Broncos poster he made and hung on a wall.
Denver fell behind early and never recovered, and as the Seahawks continued the rout, every family member except Will lost interest and left the room.
“Will just sat there and watched the whole game, in tears,” Jim said. “At the end of the game, the tape came loose and the poster fell to the ground, and it just seemed to be emblematic of what was happening at that moment. Will was so sad.”
Suffice it to say, he recovered nicely.
BYU gets second chance at a first-rate kicker
How Ferrin went from not getting recruited by BYU out of high school to finally landing with the Cougars after a church mission to Canada and a stint at Boise State has been well-documented. Ferrin came to BYU from Boise State with second-year special teams coordinator Kelly Poppinga, but the coach who really persuaded him to Provo was analyst Gavin Fowler.
He won BYU’s starting kicker job in 2023 preseason training camp, and has been mostly outstanding ever since. Tuesday, he was named one of the Lou Groza Award’s “three stars of the week” for his three field goals against the Utes.
Ferrin has made nine straight field goal attempts for BYU and 17 of 20 (85%) on field goals and 34 of 34 on PATs this season.
“Will is very humble,” said Vander Haar, the punter and holder. “It is funny, in the specialists community, they always talk about trying to have amnesia. And he is probably the best I have ever seen of having that mentality whether he misses or makes a kick of just moving on to the next rep. I think that is what makes him special as a kicker, to be honest.”
Vander Haar, who Poppinga said had his “best game yet” against the Utes, said the kicker and punter complement each other well.
“Will is pretty similar on the field as he is off the field. He is pretty relaxed. I think for the operation I am probably the one that gets too juiced up when he makes a play,” Vander Haar said. “It is kind of a nice balance where he can calm me down and I can get him fired up. So it is cool.”
And quite the change from a hot-headed toddler to an even-keeled kicking assassin.
