Gregg Easterbrook mentioned this in his column last week, and it is something I’ve always wondered. Obviously you are sacrificing field position, but if a punter practices regularly I’m sure he could get it to where he only loses 5-10 yards on the kick, while completely eliminating the risk of a lengthy return. I don’t get it, why would anyone punt the ball and let it get returned?
Part of this depends where the team is punting from, but an in-bounds punt that’s expected to land behind the 10 has a decent chance of rolling or otherwise being downed w/in the 5 (as the return guy will usually get out of the way). At the college level, I believe that’s generally considered more reliable than a coffin-corner punt.
Also, there’s the chance of the punt being fumbled or otherwise mishandled by the receiving team and being recovered by the kicking team.
All in all, the consensus is probably that the potential pros outweigh the potential cons. This is especially true at the college level, I’d guess, as return guys are generally less sure-handed and less dangerous than those found in the NFL. (And while tacklers are also less reliable, the punting team will always have strength of numbers on its side.)
They do practice it, but evidently most of them aren’t consistent enough to make it a good strategy.
I found a discussion about it in this article from 2003. Chiefs returner Dante Hall had made several big runbacks that year.
I’ve been pushing it for a while and practice it when playing Madden. Of course, we could just clone Ray Guy and be done with it…
When CFL teams adopted this tactic to prevent big returns, the CFL went and made it a penalty to punt the ball out of bounds unless it went out inside of the 20. Big punt returns are exciting and the CFL did not want to see them out of the game.
Punting isn’t as dangerous as it looks. You just don’t hear much about the dozens of punts that aren’t returned every week, as a matter of fact there were 88 not returned this past weekend(out of 148 punts). In the NFL this past weekend there were 148 punts for an average of 41.69 yards. 60 of those were returned for a total of 589 yards(9.82 per return) and only 1 touchdown. That comes out to 31.87 net yards per punt. I couldn’t find the number of those punts that were fumbled or how many ended up being retained by the punting team. Let’s see if we can find out why relatively few were returned. In the NFL in 2006 the average punt was 43.2 yards. Average hang-time on a punt is 4-5 seconds(the only number I could find was 4.6, I’m not positive that is accurate but it seems about right from my personal experience and from being an avid fan). As a punter in high school I became familiar with the mechanics of the punt coverage team. As soon as the ball is snapped some of the players take off for the punt returner, generally the two outside guys on the line of scrimmage. Everybody else stays to block, hopefully until right before the ball is punted. Most of the players in the NFL can run the 40 yard dash in the 4.5 to 5.3 second range. This easily gives the two outside guys(generally wide receivers who can run a 40 in less than 4.6 seconds) and many of the blockers time to get to the returner before he can do any damage(that is if they weren’t well blocked by the other team). Most punts are either taken as fair catches or left to bounce until downed by the punting team. Punting in college and high school is more dangerous. The punts are shorter with less hang-time and the coverage teams are generally slower and less disciplined, but the punters aren’t as accurate either. So there is a much higher chance of the ball going out of bounds far short of it’s desired place. My personal experience as a punter(I was one of the better punters in Louisiana my senior year in high school) shows that punting to the returner is much safer. I averaged over 40 net yards per punt in every game but one. In that game the coach asked me to punt out of bounds because the other team had a stellar returner. I had about 30 yards per punt in that game and some of them still landed in bounds and were returned. My conclusion is that punting to the returner, especially if you have a decent punter and/or a decent coverage team is actually safer and has a better reward to risk ratio than attempting to punt out of bounds.
Oh, of course. You don’t hear about punts that aren’t returned just like you don’t see the cornerback on the opposite side of the field from the action.
I think that, with an elite NFL returner, it can make a close game into a blowout, and a win into a loss with a mistake or an offensive lineman being pancaked. I’m willing to bet that someone will start kicking it out of bounds (assuming they have a punter that’s able, of course) and a few copycats to emerge, only to end up like the CFL and its rules against the practice.
So can giving up 10-15 yards of field position on every punt.
Is that the 10 to 15 yards from a regular return or kicking it out of bounds?
I also wonder why the end of coffin corner kicks. Why punt it into the end zone for a touchback and the ball on the 20 when you can try to put it out of bounds on the five? I could understand kicking it as far as you can if you can’t get the ball beyond the 20, but even out of bounds on the 15 makes the field position worse. Hell, even a shank is just fine as long as it’s between the 20 and the goal line.
I think it’s partially because a big high kick looks so impressive. And, of course, it’s better for a kicker’s stats. If he can kick 40 yards into the end zone, it’s better at contract time than kicking it 35 to the three yard line.
Pretty much. The only punter in the league good enough to coffin-corner consistently is Jeff Feagles of the Giants, and he’s in his forties and has been considering retirement for the last three years.
This past offseason the Giants tongued his asshole trying to get him to not retire. They offered things like he didn’t have to come to training camp, he could fly home (to Arizona) during the week instead of staying with team during the season, etc…
Unsurprisingly, Feagles has the shortest average in the league. (Somewhere between 39 and 41, IIRC.) Most punters these days clobber the ball, trying for maximum distance but sacrificing a lot of control. That’s great on your side of the field, but once you cross the 50 you’re basically conceding a touchback.
Conversely, Feagles concedes a short-ish punt from the Giants side of the field, but once past the 50 he’s (IMO, from what I’ve seen) a minimum 50% chance to pin you inside the 5, and a 90% chance to pin you inside the 15.
Coupled with solid gunners like David Tyree, Feagles is a legitimate weapon.
The single most important stat for a punter is the number downed inside the 20. Net yards is secondary.
Nowadays, that first number is so often vanishingly small that the second becomes the focus.
True, provided the kicker (or his agent) is negotiating with morons. Which is no doubt the case through much of the NFL.
I missed this the first time, despite quoting it. A 40-yard kick into the endzone is recorded as a 20 yard kick, so that wouldn’t be better no matter what.
A 60-yard kick into the endzone would be recorded as a 40 yard kick, but at that point you’d probably keep the punter and cut your gunners.
Has any one tried the equivalent of the “bomb” in Rugby League? The standard tactic on the last tackle (down) is an offensive kick. Field goals are only worth one point so they are only kicked for tactical reasons. The two general options are to roll through a kick behind the defense which onside chasers go after or put up a “bomb”.
The bomb is timed to arrive at its destination at the exact moment the attacking players arrive, and these attacking players have to come from behind the kicker. But the idea of putting up a bomb so that the receiver can catch it before the attackers arrive would be silly to a RL kicker.
So if the kicker decided to bomb the fullback or one of the wingers he would sacrifice a few yards to put up a kick that allowed his chasers to get there as the receiver tries to catch it. They then either leap over the stationary receiver and steal the ball or pound him into the earth if he catches it.
Would this work in the NFL? If you gave up a few yards on your punts to ensure that the chasers got there as the ball did, can they play at the ball, can they bury the receiver as he is catching it?
There’s a "fair catch’ rule where you have to give the receiver a certain safe catching room. If he feels like it, he can signal for a “fair catch” and you aren’t allowed to hit him after he’s caught the ball, but the play ends where the ball is received.
Well, using the statistics of The Walking Dude, 88 punts last week weren’t returned, generally because the punting team got to the ball before, right when the return team did.
The punt returner can:
1 - Field the punt successfully and attempt to return it
2 - Attempt to field the punt, muff it, and allow both teams to attempt to gain possession
3 - Call for a fair catch and field the punt with no chance for a return
4 - Allow the kicking team to down the punt
The 88 not returned would almost always be 3 and 4. Letting the other team down the punt lets them let the ball roll as far down field as possible before stopping the play, and a fair catch lets the returner catch the ball without interference.
Generally, in football, the gunners get to the returner right as the ball is arriving. It is up to the judgement of the returner as to what makes the most sense. Often blocking allows them to field the ball and get 10 or so yards. Many times, they’ll just fair catch due to a lack of blocking. If out of position, they’ll let the defense down it. But some of the hardest hits come when a return man misjudges the speed/distance of an unblocked gunner and doesn’t fair catch, in which case he gets hit by a large man at a full sprint when not prepared for a hit, just after the ball arrives, often leading to a fumble.
don’t ask, that is generally what the idea is. The punter wants to get the ball to the returner either at the same time as or after his defenders arrive. That is why the majority of punts aren’t returned at all. Sometimes, though, the ball goes farther than intended, it doesn’t stay in the air as long as the punter wants, or his defenders get blocked well enough to keep them away from the returner. Even then the returner rarely gets very far, the average punt return this season in the NFL is only about 9.5 yards with only 769 of 1586 punts being returned(48.5%) so far this year.
This is why Ray Guy was so impressive. Most punters kick far or high, but Ray Guy did both exceptionally well and he got rid of the ball quickly, resulting in an abnormally low amount of blocked punts.
Was this thread by any chance prompted by the Chicago-Denver game? Asshat Sauerbrun was quoted as saying that kicking away from Devin Hester is chicken shit and he wouldn’t do it. Hester scores on a kick and a punt, and the squib kicks suddenly appear. Bears get great field position, rally to tie at 0:28, and win it in OT.
Put the loss on Sauerbrun.