Why don’t teams use punters on long FG attempts, or placekickers in “pooch” punt situations more?
It’s two very different styles of kicking, although many punters were placekickers at some point in their high school or college days (and vice-versa). In other words, most punters aren’t NFL-caliber kickers, and most kickers aren’t NFL-caliber punters.
You occasionally see an NFL team who uses their punter as their specialist for kickoffs and long field goals; usually, it’s a team whose kicker is older, and still accurate, but doesn’t have a “long leg” anymore.
It’s weird that there is such separation. If I wanted to go all Earl Woods / Richard Williams on a son, I might consider teaching them to punt AND place kick from the age of two through college. If you were an NFL-caliber punter AND kicker you’d be worth your weight in gold, since you would essentially give the coach a 54-man roster.
Unless he were a fat kid. In that case, teach him to be a long snapper. Thankless job, but one of the most pivotal unsung positions on the team.
It’s been tried, though not recently. In the 1960s, there were a few players who did both (Don Chandler, who filled both roles for the Giants and Packers comes to mind). In the late 1970s, there were two guys out of the Southwest who were studs at both placekicking and punting while in college: Russell Erxleben (University of Texas) and Steve Little (University of Arkansas). Both of them went to the NFL: Erxleben with the Saints (drafted in the first round, even), and Little with the Cardinals.
Both of them attempted to be both kickers and punters in the NFL, but struggled tremendously. Little proved to be poor at both punting and placekicking, and was cut by the Cardinals partway through his third season (and wound up a quadriplegic after getting into a car accident shortly after being released). Erxleben wound up focusing on punting, after proving to be an inaccurate kicker; he played in the NFL for 5 seasons, but never lived up to his hype. (Long after retiring from the NFL, Erxleben went to prison for securities fraud.)
The conventional wisdom nowadays is that you’re better off having two guys focusing exclusively on each role, rather than trying to save a roster spot by having one guy do both.
This system as it is introduces an interesting flaw highlighted this week. The vast majority of NFL teams use their punter as their placeholder. This means that when the kicker gets injured the punter usually isn’t available as a replacement. Teams used to use the backup or 3rd string QB as the place holder, but the need to protect them and limit the attention the spend on things other than QBing made that unpopular.
I wonder what’s more risky, having a DT or WR as your emergency kicker or having a 3rd string QB holding. The latter certainly allows for better trick plays, but it also probably creates less continuity since punters, kickers and snappers tend not to change often. I wonder if more teams would consider using a Wildcat QB as their holder. He’s unlikely to be your 1st backup QB, or often even a 3rd, and he’d be scary in the case of fakes. It’d at least free up the punter to practice being your backup kicker.
Yeah, that’s a good idea. Maybe not so much if your widlcat guy is your starting RB like Ronnie Brown, but if the Jets wanted to put Brad Smith out there I’d be a fan.
Brad Smith, Pat White, Tim Tebow, Seneca Wallace maybe even Josh Cribbs and Devin Hester. Exactly the guys I was thinking of, though Cribbs and Hester might have too much on their plate and be too valuable for the job.
That makes sense, as the punting motion and modern “soccer” style placekicking motions are completely different and require the use of different muscles and ligaments (well, different enough). I recall the Raiders using Ray Guy as the kickoff guy for awhile, and he actually kicked the ball with the TOP of his shoe like he would do when punting, not his toe, but they stopped it after awhile because they were fearful it would mess up his punting. But several guys pre-soccer kicking era were successful doing double duty-Don Cockroft of the Browns, for example.