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.