Building a championship football team

by Paul W. Bryant

THE PUNTING GAME

I am certain our players are “sold” on the kicking game, and take pride in it. If a player takes pride in something, he will do it well. Incidentally, we work on our kicking game every Tuesday during the regular season. Previously we waited until Thursday to work on our kicking game, but we found our boys were tired the day of the football game, probably as a result of so much running on Thursday. We use the kicking together with our kick-return game in our pre-season practice as a conditioner. We feel we can get sufficient running from our kicking game to get our players in good physical condition. At the same time we are developing this important phase of the game.

The Punter

Instead of merely talking to our players about their individual kicking game assignments, we go on the field and rehearse everything over and over again. This is also true of any unusual situations that might confront the punter at various times during the game. We also time our punters. I believe it is possible to over-coach the kickers, however, and this is not desirable. I know from past experience. When we tried too thoroughly to coach our kickers, we found we were probably doing more harm than good. At least, we were not getting the desired results in comparison to the amount of time we were devoting to their instruction. As an illustration, I had Bob Gain at Kentucky, an All-American tackle, who as a freshman was a terrific kick-off man. By taking only three steps he could boot the ball out of the end zone when he kicked-off. Unfortunately we over-coached him and by the time he was a senior he would run 10 yards on his approach, and could only kick the ball 35 yards on the kick-off.

Another illustration relates to Clayton Webb, a very fine punter whom I had at the University of Kentucky. As a freshman he could “hang” the ball in the air for a relatively long period of time when he punted. Yet during his senior year I felt we had coached him down to a 29.4-yard average on his punts. Consequently we now do very little coaching of the kickers.

We like to have our punters use the step-and-a-half method, taking the first (half) step with the kicking foot, then a full step with the non-kicking foot. We ask our punters to hold the ball 18 inches in front of the hip over their kicking foot. We watch our kickers closely, time them, and try not to over-coach them if they are kicking well in practice. However, we do have a meeting with our kickers to review every situation that might confront them in a game. We want our punters to know what to do under such conditions, always taking into consideration the tactical situation. Merely talking about these problems is not sufficient training for the punters. They must be placed in various confronting situations and must have the opportunity to react to them on the practice field if they are to perform with proficiency in a game. An example will illustrate my point.

One of my former assistants at the University of Kentucky played under an extremely intelligent football coach, a Phi Beta Kappa honors graduate. The coach had gone over many situations on the blackboard, but had never taken time to actually rehearse them under game-like conditions. This was a typical situation: Assuming that a team had the lead in the game, if on the third down that team was forced to kick from behind its own goal line, should the punter receive a poor snap from his center and be unable to kick, he should pick up the football and either run with it or throw an incomplete forward pass. The team was playing Michigan State, and the score was 7-6 in the fourth quarter. The other team was backed up to its own 2-yard line. The punter said that as he lined up to punt he knew exactly what to do if he received a bad pass from his center. The pass was poor, the punter picked up the ball and threw it up into the stands. Unfortunately the play was not an incomplete forward pass, but was ruled a safety as the ball went out of the end zone behind the goal line, and Michigan State won, 8-7. I am not criticizing the punter nor his coach as both are extremely capable men, but merely citing what can occur if a kicker is merely told what to do but is not given actual experience under game-like conditions practicing it.

Our procedure is to put the ball on our 2-yard line, inform our kicker of what could occur, then give him the “works.” We load up and rush hard, give him a bad pass, etc., and our punter must react properly to the situation, always being cognizant of the tactical situation.

Since I have been coaching, one of the few punts we have had blocked was at Texas A & M when we were playing Rice Institute. The situation was as follows: third down, senior punter, poor pass from center. Instead of attempting to run with the ball, since we still had fourth down in which to kick, my punter tried to kick then. The result was a blocked punt. In fairness to the boy, I must assume the responsibility for the blocked punt. We had not done a good job of coaching the punter since he did not react to the situation properly. Nevertheless, the mistake was costly.

The Center

The most important person in our kicking game is our center. We believe if he can snap the ball back to our punter at a distance of 13 yards with a perfect pass in six-tenths of a second, we won’t get our kicks blocked. I believe about 98% of all blocked kicks have resulted from imperfect passes from the center to the kicker. Incidentally, as a coaching point, if the center makes a poor pass, your kicker should inform him of this.

In timing the center’s pass, we have had very few centers who could snap the ball in less than six-tenths of a second. I recall, however, there was a center at the University of Georgia who could get the ball back to the kicker in four-tenths of a second. This is the exception rather than the rule, however.

We time our centers in their work every day. As a point of interest, the coaches are not with the centers when we are timing them. We put a defensive man over our centers as we want our centers to pass the ball and then block a man, rather than keep their heads down, watching the ball going back to the punter.

Timing the Punter

We want our punters to get the ball away within one and three-tenths seconds from the time the ball hits their hands on the pass from center, until their foot makes contact with the ball. Gene Henderson, one of my kickers at Texas A & M, could get the ball away in one second. Babe Parella at Kentucky could also get the ball away in a second when punting. Here once again these are more exceptions than the rule.

I stated previously we wanted our kickers to use the step-and-one-half method of punting. We are not too concerned if he doesn’t follow this method, providing he kicks well. Nor are we too concerned about his method of holding and dropping the ball and other individual techniques, providing he kicks well and gets the ball away in one and three-tenths seconds or less. If our kicker is a 3-step kicker, who kicks well and can get the ball off in the prescribed time limit, we merely move him back an extra yard. Frankly, we don’t believe we’ll ever get a kick blocked if the center gets the ball back in six-tenths of a second or less, and the kicker’s time does not exceed one and three-tenths seconds (total time of one and nine-tenths seconds), providing the defensive men are bumped and not permitted to have a straight run directly at the kicker.

When talking about the punting game, one must realize the importance of the length of time the ball is in the air over the field of play. We want our kicker to be able to kick the ball in such a manner that it will remain up in the air and over the playing field for a period of four seconds or more. Consequently a kick of four seconds’ duration in flight will be about a 40-yard punt. We are not interested in an 80-yard punt, as we cannot adequately cover such a long kick. The following example will illustrate my point.

I had a player at one time who could literally kick the football a country mile. Yet his kicking was very erratic. I recall he kicked the football 78 yards out-of-bounds in a game against Tennessee, and later in the fourth quarter he kicked the ball 80 yards over the end zone line. In another football game, he kicked the ball 70 yards, out-kicking his coverage, and the opposition returned it for the game-winning touchdown against us. My point is that he was too good a kicker for us. The average net gain is the most important thing in punting, not the total distance the punter kicks the ball. A punt 40 yards from the line of scrimmage with no return is a 40-yard kick. A 60-yard punt returned 50 yards is a net punt of 10 yards. We are interested only in the net gain of the play.

If the kicked ball can remain in the air for four seconds and if it takes one and nine-tenths seconds to get the punt away, there is a total period of time of five and nine-tenths seconds expended. If our linemen block for one second on the line before releasing to cover the punt, they will have approximately four and nine-tenths seconds to cover the ball. A fast lineman can get downfield a good distance in four and nine-tenths seconds, though I don’t know of anyone who can cover 60 or 70 yards in this period of time. As you can see, this sort of thing allows a team time to get the ball, set up a wall, get a couple key blocks and run one back for a long gain or a touchdown merely because the punter has out-kicked his coverage. Therefore, we are not interested in how far the punter kicks the ball, but we are vitally interested in how far the opposition returns our punts. I shall discuss this particular phase of the kicking game in greater detail shortly.

Practicing the Punting Game

During the regular scheduled practices, we work on our defensive kicking game at least one period two days a week, and sometimes three days a week. These periods never have a time limit, and they are our last drill. Our reasoning is two-fold. First, the boys are tired and in order to get proper execution and coverage we insist they give that “little extra,” which I feel is so important in order to build a winner. Secondly, the boys know there is no time limit and we are going to work on this phase of our football program until we do it to my satisfaction. Therefore, they strive extra hard to get perfect execution and coverage so we can end practice. We feel if the boys can learn to execute the kicking game perfectly while they are tired, they will do it perfectly during the actual game.