Is punter the "dweeb" position in football?
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by Joliecat
Hello again,
A little over ten years ago, when I lived in Florida and used to go to a "meet market" bar for entertainment, I met a guy I instantly knew was an athlete. It was a combination of thngs: yes, he was big, way over six feet with shoulders a yard wide and a perfect "V" shape but he also had active eyes, perfect ESPN grooming and he radiated quiet, strong jawed, self assuredness.
Well he asked me to slow dance and I got to put my hands and wrists on those well toned ovals of shoulder and bicep muscle and I asked him "Are you an athlete?" He shrugged good naturedly and said "I was." Looking up at him (remember, I'm close to six feet) I said "Football?" He nodded and said "Yup, I was a tight end."
After being with him for an hour or so I found out his name, the team he played for, and when he played for them. This was in 1996, long before google and ubiquitous cell phones and laptops. The next Monday at work I bragged to the other women about having met him and one of them said "Are you sure he was a football player? It might have been a line." And I told them his name and what team he played on. One of my friends said, "I know this girl's husband who knows everything about every NFL team and player going back to the '70's. I'll ask him."
The next day she came back and said yes, he was an NFL player and yes he did play on the team he said he was on but that he was the punter slash tight end.
Why would he sort of lie and say he was the tight end? Punter is one of the less-cool positions on the team, maybe. They never get to score and rarely get to tackle (if they do it means they screwed up anyway) but in my view punter is an important position and something for this guy to be proud of. For a three year period this guy was doing a job that only about thirty other guys in the whole world could do. Plus it takes strength, energy and mental toughness to kick a ball forty to sixty yards when eleven guys are charging like they want to rip your head off.
Good punters help their team tremendously by hemming the other team deep on its side of the field. Sometimes they even play quarterback, during fake punt tries. If the center messes up and sails the ball high over their head, they have to ad lib really quickly to avert disaster. A Tampa Bay punter I once saw was going to try to punt from the ten yard line or so. The center snapped the ball high in the air over his head and he quickly ran back, fielded the ball and raced the ball through the end zone. I said "huh?" but doing this kept the damage to two points instead of seven and he got to kick the ball from the 20 on the next play. Much easier.
At least one quarterback was also the punter, Danny White of the Dallas Cowboys. He said that he would take out his frustrations on stalled drives by slamming hard on the football during the punt. Boomer Esiason also punted a few times for Bengals when their punter got run over on a play. Once, a punter for the New York Jets set a strange record. He had no punts at all in a playoff game where the Jets murdered the Bengals 44-17.
So punter, while it's much less glamorous than quarterback, running back, or linebacker is still an important position. And the guy in the bar was HOT whether he was a punter, a cop, a plumber, or an insurance salesman.
