RIP Ray Guy

I want to thank Sam Mills 51 for spelling Erxleben correctly. FYI, “leben” is German for “life”.

 

In college my friend Ed competed in javelin and worked hard at it, week in and week out. At the end of the season a baseball player with his only throw of the season quailfied for the Metro conference championships. Then, the same guy won the conference title with his only throw of the meet. They walk among us.

 

The Erxleben tangent on the thread cracks me up. I just remember him because I was living in New Orleans toward the end of his time with the Saints. He was a perfect symbol of the disfunction of that franchise at the time. Bum Phillips had managed to drag them to mediocrity, but outside of Morten Anderson and Rickey Jackson, they really didn't have much worth watching.

 

I understand that thinking, but I think you also need to base these decisions in what the players actually accomplish rather than giving them style points. This is why I've always thought Lynn Swann was vastly overrated. John Stallworth was the better player.

 

Lynn Swann definitely got style points. He made spectacular plays in spectacular moments. And probably benefited more from Stallworth's presense than the other way around. I don't know that Guy fits that description, though. When you watched him, you just knew he was better than everybody else. He's basically why we talk about hang time now, nearly 50 years later. Nobody was talking about that before him. And if Guy got style points, maybe it was because he was better, kind of like Barry Sanders.

 

Maybe, but I saw him play and I've seen other punters that impressed me with their ability to boom the ball, too.

Include style points if you must, but don't let them overwhelm actual accomplishments.

 

Maybe because he was a bit of a pioneer? I know when we were kids, playing in the backyard, we were Staubach or Bradshaw or Stabler or Dorsett, etc. We also were Ray Guy. We were not Reggie Roby or Steve Cox. Impressionable youths, we were impressed by Guy.

 

Quarterbacks were frequently punters. When teams played the single wing the best athlete was the tailback and he was expected to be a triple threat. That is why besides Sammy Baugh there are two HOF quarterbacks with career punting averages equal to or better than Guy's.

Many of the position players who punted in the 50's and 60's had been tailbacks in the single wing in high school or college. For example, Boyd Dowler punted for a couple years on the early 60 Packers. He threw 77 passes his senior year at Colorado in a single wing.

Today most high school teams play in offenses where the ball is snapped to a quarterback lining up five or so yards behind the center. If I was a high school coach I would have my quarterbacks practicing punting. Then, for example, if your team is looking at a fourth and four at the 50 you can line up in a spread formation. If the defense drops the safety back your team has the option of trying to go for the first down playing 11 versus 10. If the defense stays in a regular defense you kick the ball and let it roll down close to the goal line.

 

Guy only punted in the NFL but he was a starting safety for Southern Miss

 

Thank you for sharing. Rick is the man in Mississippi.

 

Some teams do that. I've even seen a few at the pro level, including John Elway and Ben Roethlisberger. That figures since Roethlisberger was a big Elway fan.