Potentially stupid football question I was just wondering about. Why punt to the returner..... ever? Why not kick it out of bounds every single time? The only outcome aside from hoping for a turnover is going to be possitive yards for the return team. And it opens up the potential for big return yards and maybe touchdown. If I had to guess it is easier to "max out" the punt without angling it and risking going OB earlier than you want it. Let's just say that is the case. You kick a so so out of bounds kick and it's cut short 10 yards because it went out early. Even if you bombed it down the middle chances are the returner is going to get somewhere around 10 yards so you're back to where you started. And again you open the door for a big return. My other thought is you expose yourself to a blocked punt more by angling it because the pressure coming off the edges? I don't know if that's true or not. So I'm sitting here wondering why you would ever punt the ball to a returner. Having a tough time seeing the possitive outcome vs. the negative. p.s. multiply the theory by a factor of 100 when talking about a Hester or Jackson. That seems really ludicrous to kick to them.
You answered your own questions. It's harder than it looks to get a full potential punt angled down the sidelines. I was the punter on our high school team, ( I know, it was not college ball, so it holds no merit) and it takes a ton of skill to put the ball out of bounds where you want it. I could kick a beaut of a spiral down the middle of the field, but when trying to place the ball on the side lines I would say that half my practice punts were muffed off the side of my foot. I say the pros and cons are the same when kicking to a returner. Except for Hester as you pointed out.
Hey NY.... you forgot to calculate in the illegal block in the back that they always seem to have. LOL How hard can it be to teach them NOT to hit the big numbers? LOL
for lack of a better answer (lord knows i dont have many) i'd say thats the way things have been done forever... field position counting on your punter to "pin them deep" let your bullets and SS (suicide squad) run down and cover the punt sure its tough to do as a punter, even tougher when you have 10 guys screaming at you and foaming at the mouth, thats all before you have to catch the long snap, set up and angle an oblong ball off you foot 50yds, oh yeah dont forget the elements i hear ya though on some cases. but i'll bet if you look back the number of + returns (each team classifies them (+) diff as to what makes a "good" punt cover and what the head coach/sp teams is willing to "live" with) punting FAR outweighs playing it safe and trying to angle it. all of this i'd say applies to the punt landing + the opponets 20yd line, then anyting inside that area i'd say angle away! lastly you'd like to think the guys you are coaching/paying are coached up and have better skill than the the other guys (isnt that what football is? our guys are better than yours) then the X factors that break all the rules.... Hester, D. Jackson, D. Hall, D. Meggett etc. great thread, crap not saying im correct by any means though
I would think, like 2Lunger said, to max out your punt. If you have a good punter and a great speed flying down the field on punt return coverage, chances are they aren't going to return many anyway. Chas Henry and UF was a great example of this last year. Henry just booted it as far as far and high as he could because the Florida's special teams players were able to get down the field so quickly. Rarely did UF have a returned punt attempt, mostly fair catches.
I figured that had to be the primary reason. It probably is a lot harder than it looks. But, they are NFL punters. I mean, they pretty much..... punt all day lol. Seems like they'd be fairly good at it. Good enough to Net say 40 yards consistently. I'd take that as a head coach on a consistent basis and have ZERO risk for a return. It just seems like when I'm watching a play it's like an extra offensive play for the return team. It's an opportunity for a big play with little upside for the punting team. The only time I see an advantage for the punting team is when they are pinning them inside the 10 (no return). So why not take away the 4,5,6 extra plays from them and don't kick it to them?
If you know who peter king is, his monday morning quarterback column actually addressed this a few weeks back - This is an exerpt from this column. Peter king..... The other day, I got into a Twitter spat with Minnesota punter Chris Kluwe (@ChrisWarcraft on Twitter). Kluwe defended Giants punter Matt Dodge for not being able to punt the ball out of bounds; Dodge's inbounds punt eight days ago against Philadelphia resulted in DeSean Jackson returning it for the winning touchdown in the Giants' stunning loss. I criticized Dodge for not being able to do something so elementary, and I defended Tom Coughlin's right to ream the kid out immediately, which he did in full view of the FOX cameras. My points: Punters ought to be able to punt a ball out of bounds 99 out of 100 times, and coaches ought to be able to yell at players who screw up. Anyway, Kluwe and I went at it, and I ended up calling him and offering him a chance to rebut me in MMQB. Not in a name-calling way, but in a way where he'd be able to explain why, in his mind, it's harder to punt it out of bounds than it looks. Here what Kluwe wrote: ------ Monday night against the Chicago Bears I faced a challenging returner, someone most people consider the best returner ever to play in the NFL, Devin Hester. Just like Matt Dodge the day before, I too was told to punt the ball out of bounds, a game plan we would implement all four quarters. In the first half I was able to execute the plan to perfection with out of bounds punts of 36, 25, 30, and 37 yards. In the second half, even though we were still following the same plan, I mis-hit a punt off the side of my foot. The result: a ball in the field of play and Hester returning it for a touchdown, making NFL history for the most kick or punt returns for touchdown (14) in a career. Allow me to give you a glimpse into the (admittedly very specialized) world of directional punting, and why sometimes even though we do everything we can to get the ball out of bounds it just doesn't make it there. You have two seconds to catch the snap, take a proper line, position your drop, and then make the ball hit a precise spot 48 yards down the field. Quarterbacks practice like this throwing the ball into a trash can. You have to use your foot. Sound easy? According to many fans and pundits, yes. They would have you believe that punting the football out of bounds, while still maintaining a halfway decent average, is so easy that any one of them could do it given the opportunity. I have some experience with kicking out of bounds. To get more input, I enlisted the aid of Brad Maynard (the best directional punter currently playing), Jeff Feagles (the best directional punter to ever play), Darren Bennett (all-decade punter for the 1990's) and Adam Podlesh (punter for the Jaguars). Whereas the average NFL punter kicks the ball out of bounds about 10 percent of the time, Feagles and Maynard are outliers, both above 15 percent. Those four men have more 60 years of combined punting knowledge. According to my panel, there are factors to keep in mind, all of which must be executed properly for a successful kick: 1. Body alignment, or where your hips are aimed down field. 2. The drop from your hands to your foot. 3. Weather conditions. Body alignment begins before the snap. Most punters will set their feet and hips where they want the ball to go, which for an out of bounds kick is about 30 yards down the field to the sideline (since the ball MUST go out of bounds), and then swivel their torso to face the long-snapper. Any discrepancy in the snap requires an adjustment to the ball (which means moving your feet), negating prior aiming. At that point we utilize a fundamental punting technique called "winging it'' and all bets are off regarding where the ball will go. The drop has to be absolutely consistent every time; any sort of variation in the forward tilt or sideways angle of the ball will cause a corresponding change in where the ball goes once kicked. The split second the ball leaves your hand and before it hits your foot you have absolutely no control over what happens to it, which leads to our third factor. The weather. Wind is the punter's worst enemy. An inopportune gust can make a mockery of the best plans (just ask Sean Landeta). Good punters will compensate for this by holding the ball as long as possible in windy situations but you'll always have that moment of vulnerability as the ball free falls towards your foot. Also don't forget that you'll have to take the wind into account when you're aiming downfield. Do you aim a little further to avoid a 10-yard punt from a wind gust and risk leaving it in play? Or do you keep your aim the same and hope you get lucky? Let's say you've successfully negotiated these three hurdles, and actually kicked the ball where you wanted. Congratulations! You just hit a 30-yard punt. If something went wrong (which it so easily can) and the ball happened to go off the side of your foot you've either hit an 18-yard punt or put it into the field of play. Failure. No team has ever seriously considered kicking the ball out of bounds consistently as a viable punting strategy. If you could kick it 40 yards out of bounds every time, you would make the Pro Bowl every year. So if no team has ever had a punter it's asked to kick the ball consistently out of bounds in almost 30 years, it must be extraordinarily difficult to consistently kick the ball out of bounds where you want it to go. No high school teams practice it, no college teams practice it, and yet somehow once you make it to the NFL you're supposed to have mastered this extremely difficult skill set. So the next time you yell at the punter, "Kick it out of bounds!'' remember this: It's not quite as easy as it looks. Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/peter_king/12/26/week-16/index.html#ixzz1BVqsiNL3 Sorry about the length..
I did look up punt return averages in the league (top 20). They range from 21.5 to 11.2. So basically you're kicking it knowing on average they will get at least 11 yards and sometimes more. Sometimes a lot more. Still seems that booting it net even 30 yards would be a good bet. But like the article said it hasn't been a punting strategy for years in the NFL so I guess there is a reason or they would be. I've never done it, so I can't say but it sure doesn't seem like it would be that hard for a professional punter.
Turnovers. Look at the % of punts that are fumbled compared to a normal play. Add in how difficult it is to angle a punt. And i can see it. Hester is the greatest ever, but he sure does like to fumble. 23 since hes been in the league.
I'm surprised teams don't practice it. I'm thinking a kicker probably isn't all that busy at practice anyway...
LOL that's what I'm saying. The guy kicks! That's his job and what he does everyday. He practices punts. You mean to tell me if you practice everyday at kicking it out of bounds already having talent at it that you can't be consistent in net yards? I also don't understand the angle thing. It's still a straight line to the target. The target is just somewhere different than down the middle. Pick out a hot chick in the stands that's in line with your destination and kick it! It's the same as down the middle but a different line.
NY, as you can see there is a lot involved in a punt. The most important thing is the drop. You have to be consistant in your drop. It would be like asking you to hit a pie plate with a wedge at 54 yards. What would be your average on that? It's the same skill set.
pretty much nail on the head right there! guys also remember the sheer pressure involved... you have a few bad punts/games in a row, SEE YA! then pretty much the most athletic dudes (collectively) on the field are playing teams running at you i hear what folks are saying about "if thats all you do all day then why cant you do it all the time?" but if that were the case why do great punters do it for soooooooooooooo long, how come some college kid can just hop out every year and land a Punting spot on a NFL team? you see the best DL, LB QB's do it every year. harder than it looks and thats why there is only one on each team for the most part. but thats why they are called professionals. Professionals make difficult tasks look easy!
