What Makes A Star Punter?

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Choosing a punter is never an easy task for an NFL coach; just ask Seattle’s Mike Holmgren. Not wanting to rely on an inexperienced punter, this off-season Holmgren cut both Donnie Jones, whom he drafted in 2004, and Chris Kluwe, whom he signed as an undrafted free agent, and kept eight-year veteran Leo Araguz on his roster. If punters were as important as quarterbacks, those moves would have been the equivalent of cutting Matt Hasselbeck and signing Brooks Bollinger.


Jones, now in Miami, leads the league with an average of 40.2 net yards a punt. Kluwe, now in Minnesota, ranks 13th in the league with an average of 37.9 net yards a punt. Either one would have been a much better choice than Araguz, who Holmgren released after four games in which he averaged 34.7 net yards a punt. In the six games since then, Araguz’s replacement, Tom Rouen, has averaged 36.5 net yards a punt (25th in the NFL).


Regardless, after beating the Giants on Sunday, Seattle is the favorite to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl. But the Seahawks’ decision to get rid of Jones could cost them down the stretch. When Seattle has to punt, Rouen doesn’t give his defense as much help as Jones would because Rouen’s short kicks allow opposing offenses to start in good field position. Seattle’s offense is good enough to play with anyone, but a game of field position could put the Seahawks at a disadvantage.


Holmgren is far from the first coach to miscalculate when evaluating punters. Few coaches understand what makes a punter successful because the mechanics of punting are completely different from the other skills NFL players need. None of the NFL’s 32 head coaches punted during their playing days, and only four special-teams coaches punted at any level: Baltimore’s Gary Zauner, who punted at Wisconsin-La Crosse; Cincinnati’s Darrin Simmons, who punted at Kansas; Minnesota’s Rusty Tillman, who punted at Northern Arizona; and Dallas’s Steve Hoffman, who punted for the Washington Federals of the United States Football League.


Coaches also struggle to identify good punters because punting is, by its nature, unpredictable. No other aspect of the game is as susceptible to the bounce of an oblong ball, a gust of wind, or even the effects of altitude – which always makes Denver’s punters look better than they actually are.


The NFL oversimplifies its official statistics by using gross distance to rank punters, even though effective punting is as much about accuracy as it is about leg strength. If a team punts from the 50-yard line and the ball goes into the end zone, its punter gets credit for a 50-yard punt even though he has only given his team 30 yards of field position because the other team gets the ball at the 20-yard line. If a punt from the 50 goes out of bounds at the 10-yard line, the punting team is better off, but the punter is credited with only a 40-yard punt. That’s why net distance, which credits the first punt as 30 yards and the second punt as 40 yards, is a better measure of a punter’s ability than gross distance.


The best punters have not just a strong leg but also what is known as a good “short game” – the ability to kick the ball inside the 20-yard line without letting it go into the end zone. Philadelphia’s Dirk Johnson, for instance, ranks 25th in the league in gross average but is one of the best punters in football. He ranks in the top 10 in net average, and of his 39 punts this year, 11 landed inside the 20 while none went into the end zone.(League-wide, just over 8% of all punts go for touch backs.) Indeed, Philadelphia’s punting game has suffered since Johnson was lost for the season with a groin injury in the Eagles’ seventh game. The Eagles have signed and released two young players, Nick Murphy and Reggie Hodges, neither of whom performed at a level even close to Johnson’s. This week they signed the 43-year-old Sean Landetta, the Giants’ Pro Bowler of the 1980s, to try to bring some stability to the position.


In addition to keeping punts out of the end zone, skillful punters keep the ball in the air long enough that their teammates have time to prevent the return man from running it back. The NFL does not record official hang-time statistics, but a good way to approximate them is to determine how often a punter’s punts are returned. San Diego’s Mike Scifres, who has had only 35% of his punts returned in his two years in the league (the league average is slightly more than 50%), gets better hang time than any other punter. San Diego rewarded Scifres in November with a four-year contract extension that averages $1.9 million a year, making him the highest-paid punter in the league.


But teams don’t have to pay a lot to get good production out of their punters. Both Jones and Kluwe make league-minimum salaries. Seattle’s decision to cut them wasn’t about cutting costs; it was about misjudging talent.


As much as Holmgren must surely wish he could have Jones or Kluwe back, his biggest mistake came three years ago, when Jeff Feagles left Seattle because Holmgren wouldn’t match the Giants’ relatively paltry offer of a $500,000 signing bonus on top of an annual salary of $750,000.


On Sunday, Feagles set a new NFL record by playing in his 283rd consecutive game. Defensive lineman Jim Marshall, whose record of 282 consecutive games Feagles broke, could have pointed out that playing on the line takes a much harsher toll than punting. Instead, he congratulated Feagles for showing up every day for 18 years. At punter, consistency is hard to find. Feagles has it, and the Seahawks wish they did.



Mr. Smith is a writer for FootballOutsiders.com.


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