RIP Ray Guy

I wore out a couple of footballs punting with buddies bc all you needed was 2 guys and you throw it or kick it back and forth. We had 2 fields near us and I’d play pickup football and it was our street, Fay Rd. Vs. Fielding Drive, always tackle, in Calgary. I tried to copy the way different punters held the ball. In the really old days there were guys who actually just dropped the ball, last one I can remember was probably late 60s maybe early 70s. Diiferent punters started holding the bottom and side of the ball and a few even held the top of the at the laces and kind of forced the ball downward so when they kicked it they got a rebound effect. I guess. Same with leg action, some guys would come across it beautifully to get the spiral effect. A guy could spend hours trying all the different punting motions.

 

A defensive lineman (Lou Michaels) was the Colts' kicker in the late 60s. Man, kicking must have really sucked back then, because this guy was a two-time Pro Bowl kicker who made 54.8% of his kicks and led the league in field goals made one season. His brother, Walt, was defensive coordinator for the Jets in Super Bowl III. Lou missed FG tries of 27(!) and 46 yards in Super Bowl III. Later, he said, “People say, ‘Forget about it.' How do you do that when your brother has your Super Bowl ring?”

Former Kentucky player widely known for his quote after one of the Wildcats' extremely rare wins over Tennessee, when he said, "Nothing sucks like a Big Orange."

 

When Yale Lary was the punter for the Lions, DE Jim Martin and LB Wayne Walker were the kickers
When Lary retired WR Pat Studstill took over as the punter
IIRC, Garo Yepremian was the Lions’ first full time kicker and Alex Karras laughed him out of town

 

When I was like 9 or 10 years old in the early 1980s, my friends and I played a similar game. One guy punted, the other guy returned it. One-on-one tackling. Lots of fun either before or after the noon Bears game.

For some reason we called the game “Freeman McNeil.” Not sure why — none of us were Jets fans, and I don’t think he even returned punts. Liked his name, I guess.

 

You do like to cherry pick the guys you compare him to.

And net yards is something a punter has very little control over once the ball leaves his his foot. Unless he’s a really fast guy who can tackle.

 

The 1993 Corky Ramirez would have been geeking out over this thread. Maybe he still is.

back then, as a senior in high school, I set up a goalpost from old scrap wood on the edge of the woods and kicked (straight ahead - none of this soccer style shit) from the edge of the driveway. I think I measured it 32 yards. My heroes were the Matt Bahrs and Raul Allegres of the world.

Being a Giants fan, Sean Landeta was great (except that Bears game in ‘85, but it wouldn’t have mattered in the end anyway). Always thought he could have been a potential HOFer, too.

last bit of trivia: in the game where Tom Dempsey hit his 63-yarder, he also hit the shortest possible field goal at the time - 8 yards.

 

Kickers in the 60's did suck. According to Pro Football Reference the most accurate kicker to retire before the merger in 1970 was Don Chandler, who hit 58%. Guys who hit 55% like Groza or Michaels were considered among the best kickers in the league. And this was when the goalposts were on the goal line.

In the 60's the league found out that that they could import soccer players from Europe like Yepremian and they were more accurate. This accelerated the move to specialization and if you look at the list of most accurate kickers on Pro-Football-Reference you see kickers accuracy increasing decade by decade.

I remember when the Gogolak brothers started kicking soccer style and it was treated like the introduction of communism to the great American game. About 10 years ago my son and I watched a game where a clip of Mark Moseley was shown. I told him Moseley was the greatest of the old fashioned straight ahead kickers (Moseley hit 66% of his field goals in his career). My son could not believe anyone ever kicked a football that way.

I wonder if football will eventually move to the universal adaptation of Australian style punting.

 

Compare that to this season, when only 10 guys are below 80 percent and the worst (Minnesota's Greg Joseph) is at 64.3 percent. Joseph is the only one under 70 percent.

 

My dad taught me to punt, kicking in his dress shoes out in the street. He played end, punted and kicked for Dunster House at Harvard, which were house champions in 1946. They were supposed to play the Yale champs but because of travel restrictions played the BU varsity instead, losing 22-16. Dad missed his only PAT of the season, in the snow. I picked up placekicking on my own and, with none of his ability walked on at Tulane and kicked an extra point in the spring game, helping the scrubs beat the varsity. I was the only guy from my high to school to so much as sniff D-1 action. Practicing on the same Tulane Stadium turf where Dempsey kicked, senior year I won the intramural kicking with a barefoot long of 49 yards.

 

Lou Michaels was before my time, but the two things I remember reading about him when I was a kid was his argument with Namath before the Super Bowl and that in sports almanacs, he was the only guy among the all-time point leaders who had scored a touchdown, kicked an extra point and field goal and scored a safety. I thought that was quite unique.

 

What was the deal with the barefoot kicker fad in the 1970s? I remember a few guys doing it, and then by the mid-80s it died out once they retired.
Was there an actual advantage to it? It just looks painful and cold, especially for a guy like Tony Franklin who spent his entire career kicking in Philadelphia and New England.

 

I felt like my shoe absorbed too much of my massive impact. I went to a sock, and then barefoot, as I was in temperate NOLA. When I'd come home to northern NJ for break we'd play pickup and I'd still kick barefoot. The cold never bothered me.

Interestingly, we had a barefoot straight-on kicker at Tulane. He wrapped a thick rubber band between his toes and ankle, and actually kicked with the undersides of his toes.