Punt Protection...

[The Big Slick]

anyone seem to notice we have come awfully close to getting a punt blocked lately. MTSU almost got to two....got a roughing the punter out of one...seems like LSU came close several times too. I think we tried to rugby kick it once last week and almost screwed that up....

 

[jcdawgman18]

Is having three offensive lineman as the up men. They are worthless in coverage and offere no ability to fake a punt if so desired. It's a good thing Hutchins has been hanging his punts high so that the gunners are usually waiting on the ball to come down.

 

[lawdawg02]

go back and watch mtsu's first punt, and you can see that it was very windy at that game. so much so that we called a timeout at the end of the first quarter so that we could punt with the wind instead of against it. as hutchins came off the field after the rugby kick, he was looking at mullen as if to say "i've never done that before, but was that good?"

i don't really like the formation because i think it's a little more dangerous, but it's supposedly better for coverage, and LOTS of teams are using the formation. auburn used that formation when we blocked their punt. i guess having the big guys back to block is so that you have guys who won't be knocked backwards and have long arms. but the flip side is, as jc said, you are giving up any type fake and those guys are worthless in coverage (see addison lawrence trying to chase chad jones on the big lsu return). i do think that the punter is a couple of yards deeper, though. good thing we have an all-american long snapper.

 

[Sutterkane]

keeping it low was the right play. One of MTSU's first punts was attempted high and into that wind, and I think they got a 20 yard punt out of it. The rest of the game it seemed like every punt in that direction was low. It was also the reason Hutchins boomed a couple going the other way too. He did look awkward on the rugby punt, he really did look like he didn't know what he was doing lol.

 

[lawdawg02]

but i don't think people knew how windy it was. i was amazed that we actually saw what happened to the other team's punt and changed the strategy for our punt based on something we saw during the game. competent coaching is FUNdamental.