Building a championship football team

by Paul W. Bryant

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.