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It looks like Zach Hocker is still a Hog, sort of. He was drafted in the 7th round with the 228th pick immediately following Kiero Small’s selection by Seattle.
Zach Hocker started 2013 just 7 points shy of the top spot in the all-time scoring list at the University of Arkansas and easily ran away with the scoring title during his senior season. He holds many of the top positions in the Arkansas record books due to his consistency, his longevity, and the terrific offensive teams of his first two seasons.
Zach has made his field goals, performed kickoff duties, and even got into the mix punting the ball in 2013 and did very well, proving his versatility.
Hocker played in 50 games over his career, only failing to score twice during that 4 year span. He was the kicker during Arkansas’ 21-5 run during his freshman and sophomore seasons.
He was a late commitment to Arkansas out of Russellville, and was not even the Hogs’ top option as a kicker that year, but when plans with another kicker fell through, the Razorbacks ended up with Hocker and it proved to be a very fortunate pairing.
Strengths
Leg strength is huge. He has converted long field goals throughout his career and in his senior season he hit a 54 yarder that looked like it would've been good from 60 if not longer. He kicked off 50 times in 2013 and the ball was ruled a touchback on 34 of those kickoffs. He also showed impressive leg strength on punting duty with a 77 yarder during his Senior season.
His consistency is also extremely key. Impressively, he was perfect on PATs during his senior, junior, and freshmen season, and only missed two PATs during his entire career which included 171 PATs made out of 173 attempted. He rarely missed from inside the 40 yard line, with a career average of 77% of his field goals made. Going with consistency, accuracy was always good for Hocker.
Weaknesses
I think the only knock you could have on him was his poor performance during his junior season. The question that has to be asked was what was going on there? Was it an injury, was he just fed up with the state of the team? Were they just asking him to do too much and making bad coaching decisions?
All that questioning though being put aside, he didn't really have a moment where I thought the moment was too big for him.
Prospects
Zach showed his punting ability a little bit his senior season, which will make him more useful for NFL teams as they often have kickers and punters back each other up or just let someone like Janikowski handle all the duties.
Zach was a fantastic Razorback and his leaving the program will be hard for Razorback fans. We've grown accustomed to feeling like he was going to be automatic on field goals and he pretty much was. With Hocker NFL teams will hopefully see the same thing. Good Luck Zach, and Woo Pig Sooie!
