Tyler Mullan doesn’t fall into the category of a secret weapon — you need only to crack open the Queen’s Gaels all-time career records and his name is the first you land on.
Career scoring: 1. Tyler Mullan 449. In his five seasons dating back to 2022, he’s hit on 93 field goals, another school record, and 170 converts.
In the first quarter of the Gaels’ 42-20 victory over the Ottawa Gee-Gees at Richardson Stadium, he took advantage of a friendly wind and bombed a three-pointer from 55 yards to add another school record, the longest field goal. The previous record of 52 yards had been set by Brian Shore in 1979 and matched by Dillon Walmsley 13 years ago.
Queen’s has four regular-season games left to play and the number of games in the OUA playoffs and anything beyond is a matter to be determined. Barring illness or injury, Mullan has plenty of opportunities to put his records further out of reach of kickers who might come along for the next century or so. You wouldn’t even bet against him going deeper than the 55-yarder moonshot — the ball didn’t crawl over the bar and might have been good from 58 or 60 yards.
Queen’s head coach Steve Snyder might have had a premonition about the long-distance kick. In a session with the media prior to the Gaels’ 55-17 victory at Carleton in their third game of the season, Mullan’s name came up in conversation.
“He’s really stretched his distance. When he came here, he was very accurate, very consistent, but he didn’t have the biggest leg, backing him up to 50. But now we’re comfortable with him (at that range) even in game scenarios.”
That scenario rolled out against the Gee-Gees as if it were scripted.
“In previous years, I wasn’t put out for those longer field goals,” Mullan said. “It’s something I’ve been working on in the weight room, getting my leg stronger and adding that distance. It’s great to have that trust of the coach.”
While Mullan admittedly didn’t have the leg for placements in the 50-yard range on arrival at Queen’s in 2022, Snyder suggested the kicker had the make-up and work ethic necessary for an elite collegiate kicker, one who has to be in the running for All-Canadian honours in this his final season.
“He came in with a really good sense of himself,” Snyder said. “Since being here, he’s earned the belief of his teammates. His teammates believe that he’s going to make every kick, no matter what, and that’s helped him over the years. They call him ‘Money Mullan’ for a reason.”
To this point, Mullan has made all 14 of his field-goal attempts and all 18 of his conversion opportunities.
Mullan’s reliability factors into Snyder’s decision-making in pressure situations and likewise, the coach has confidence in punter Matt Driver, who doubles as the placeholder on points-after and field goals. Snyder spared no superlative in his assessment of his pair of specialists: “as good as it gets” in Canadian collegiate football.
For Mullan, 55 yards was as long as it got in the Ottawa game, but not remotely the most memorable and impactful moment. No, that would be his onside kick at the start of the second half last Saturday when the Gaels were trailing the Gee-Gees and the game’s outcome seemed very much in doubt.
“Main message I got was they’d never seen a 55-yarder get overshadowed by an onside kick,” Mullan said.
Mullan said his last successful onside kick came during his high school days at St. Joseph-Scollard Hall Catholic in North Bay and it was “sky” shots rather than squibs along the lines of the kick against Ottawa.
“We had a pretty fast guy and I ‘sky-ed’ it to him,” Mullan said. “I remember him taking one in the air and taking it to the house (end zone).”
If Mullan does break his school long-distance record, it seems unlikely to come in Saturday’s showdown against the undefeated Mustangs at Western and not simply because of the risk-reward would be tough to balance in a head-to-head battle for first place in the OUA. The overriding issue figures to be field conditions at Western Alumni Stadium.
In the Mustangs’ 32-25 win over McMaster last weekend, Western’s placekicker Mateo Pasquini missed both his field goal attempts and on one, from 40 yards, he was nearly supine when he hit the ball. When Pasquini planted to make contact, he lost all traction and wound up flat on his back, like he’d hit an icy sidewalk.
The Western kicker was unable to track the ball and probably just as well for his sense of self-worth — the wounded duck flew 20 yards wide and barely plummeted in the end zone. A McMaster returner ran it out comfortably, avoiding the concession of a rouge.
Pasquini’s stumble was a byproduct of conditions at Western’s home field, an expanse of artificial grass that is well-worn and in need of repair or replacement. Even though Pasquini is first-year player in Western’s lineup, he still has more experience on the treacherous surface than any visiting kicker — if the surface can undo the Mustangs’ own, visitors should be on high alert and visitors’ coaches no less.
“It’s super slick and it’s just about finding your footing,” Mullan said. “(The surface) is something we’ve been thinking about all week and I’ll be bringing every kind of cleat. It’s about finding the right one.
If Mullan needed any encouragement going into the game at Western, it might come from the visiting kicker last week in London — McMaster’s Michael Horvat hit all three of his field-goal attempts, including a 52-yarder, which might suggest the wear and tear on the turf is a little less severe closer to midfield.
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