The punter is also usually the place holder - the player that catches the snap and sets the ball on the ground for the kicker to attempt an extra point or field goal. The position requires good hand eye coordination and not much else, so it’s a good fit for a punter. I remember when the quarterback (or backup quarterback) was the place holder, but that seems to have faded away as a practice.
Iirc, in tn the CFL, the punter and kicker are the same. Not sure why.
Agreed – the holder usually was a quarterback, though sometimes a wide receiver or even a defensive back handled it.
My suspicion is that part of the reason for the shift is the limited amount of practice time available during the week (and the increased complexity of offenses and defenses in the NFL), and the greater importance that’s now placed on getting the kicking game right. Time spent working with the long snapper and the kicker in practicing placekicks would be time taken away from working with the offense or the defense, if the holder also played a regular position.
Slightly smaller roster size in the CFL may play a role in that. CFL teams can only dress 44 players for a game, and they have one more on the field at any one time than an NFL team does (so, they effectively need more non-kickers than NFL teams do). NFL teams have 54-player rosters, though they only dress 45 for a game.
In one of his books from the 80’s about football, I recall John Madden discussing that kickers and punters rarely could crossover (Madden, it should be noted, coached Ray Guy, considered one of the greatest punters of all time, along with the aforementioned George Blanda).
He explained it was a difference in how you use the foot. A punter points his foot when he kicks the ball, whereas a kicker keeps his foot at an angle. Per Madden, this difference in technique makes the transition difficult.
Back when toe-style placekicking was still common, that was true. It’s not a relevant difference today, however – a punter and a soccer-style placekicker both “point” their foot, but the kicking swings, themselves, are considerably different.
(Guy was also the Raiders’ backup kicker, and he often handled kickoffs for them, as well, and was pretty good at putting the ball through the end zone, which wasn’t common back then.)
I think you have the NFL numbers backwards, I think because you’re adding the emergency QB to the wrong number.
NFL teams have 53 players on the roster, and 45 + Emergency QB = 46 dress for a game.
Or at least that was the case from 1991 to 2011. In 2011 they abolished the emergency QB rule and now teams can simply dress 46 players. (Any 46 they please, apparently) This was news to me when I googled it just now to verify before posting.
The Eagles coaching staff must regret not thinking of my idea. I bet they’re really kicking themselves.
I was looking at old info. 
As a piece of trivia related to NFL kicking, I remember hearing or reading several years ago that the Bears punter backed up the kicker and vice versa, but they both used their opposite legs when doing it. It seems the motion is different enough that they didn’t want to mess up their normal kicking/punting motion by punting/kicking.
I think that the punter generally acts as the holder for the kicks and it’s been that way for some time now. It seems logical for this since the special teams specialists would all generally work together and not have offense or defense duties to attend to. Back up QBs used to be holders but I haven’t seen that since Tony Romo’s rookie year when he backed up Drew Bledsoe.
Long snapper is also a specialized position, so much so that former Bears long snapper Patrick Mannelly has his own site dedicated to it. He started out as a offensive tackle and concentrated full time on long snapper after learning the skill and is known to say that he liked long snapping because he didn’t get beat up on every play.
Back in the early eighties, the Browns’ starting punter, Johnny Evans, was also their fourth-string quarterback. But I suspect that was unusual even then.
In that same era, Bengals punter Pat McInally was also a wide receiver. He was usually a backup, but he actually started in thirteen games as WR, and had 57 career recpetions.
McInally’s later claim to fame was being the creator of Starting Lineup sports action figures. 
I used to have some of those! That’s pretty cool.
In 1999 the Jets’ starting punter, Tom Tupa, was also their second-string QB, and he actually played in the game where Testaverde ruptured his achilles.
That Time a Punter Played QB for the Jets and Threw 2 TD’s | NFL Vault Stories (Youtube)
That video is fun; I remember enjoying Tupa throwing passes so much. I didn’t know he was also the first player in NFL history to score a 2pt conversion, with the Browns in 94.
Evans played QB all through college.
I was planning to make a post about Tupa this morning; in thinking about McInally, I was trying to remember who was the last NFL kicking specialist who also specifically played another, non-kicking position, and I think it’s Tupa.
Tupa was both a punter and quarterback in college, at Ohio State, but when he first came into the NFL, he pretty much strictly played as a QB – in his first five seasons, he only punted six times (in 1989, which I suspect was a case of being called on to punt when the Cardinals’ punter got injured). He was actually the Cardinals’ starting QB for most of the '91 season.
Then, starting in '94, when he joined Cleveland, he was primarily a punter, though he was also still considered to be a backup / emergency quarterback for the various teams on which he punted. It looks like the only time he really played QB during the punter phase of his career was in that '99 game with the Jets, when Testaverde got hurt.
On his podcast Pat McAfee specifically said this. The back up quarterback would have the chance to work with the kicker on one or two snaps during the week. The rest of the time he was working with the second team training up the defense. The timing of the snap and placement is so important that it needs to be practiced often. He cited the fact that The players on the other side of the ball have gotten much faster. There is more emphasis on speed for the outside player. The kicker has a few seconds less to get the kick off now than what he did in the past. There is no wiggle room the timing has to be perfect. The punter has time to work with the place kicker and long snapper all week long.
I wouldn’t have thought that it was specialized enough to warrant a dedicated roster spot, but apparently it does. Had I known, I’d probably have tried to walk-on in college as a long snapper (I was pretty good at it in high school actually).
My recollection is that NFL teams only started having designated, dedicated long snapper specialists (who rarely, if ever, play on non-kicking plays) in the past 20-25 years.
You might think that, “Kicking a football is kicking a football”, but it’s not. Punting and place kicking (tee or teeless) are two totally different things.
Even so, the backup kicker/punter on a team is often his counterpart simply because, “If you try and like one form of kicking, it’s very likely that you will at least dabble in the other form of kicking.”