Punting is a very technical discipline. I would caution every young athlete to consider your specialty carefully before you decide that you want to be a punter.

It seems to me that kicking is a much easier discipline to master than punting. Now don’t get me wrong, mastering a discipline and mastering a discipline well enough to get paid to do it, are two completely different levels of mastering. If you want to be a professional at either kicking or punting you are going to have to work incredibly smart and incredibly hard.

But kicking is different than punting in that most every athlete that I have trained has had some history of playing soccer as a youngster. They have learned the basics of leg whip, good contact, reasonable approach, etc. They have been kicking a soccer ball for a long time. And there are several similarities between kicking a soccer ball, and kicking a football. So to me, kicking field goals is more familiar right from the start to a new student of the discipline.

But let’s talk about punting for now. There is nothing you can do as a kid that will reasonably prepare you to be a good punter, other than to punt a football. And even doing that without instruction at a young age can create more problems than benefits if you choose to do that at the level that allows you to do it for a living. Punting at every level requires the athlete to put a premium on technique and control in order to be good. Also, as Sean Landetta often reminds me, “there is no perfect way to punt a football. Everyone does something a bit different”. How true that is!

Each punter has different ratios in body parts to deal with. Length of legs, arms, torso, and neck are the most obvious body parts that are different. But there are also more subtle data points to consider too. Your hands, the posture, or natural attitude of your arm, wrist, and leg. We see all combinations of these points working together differently in every punter. So as a coach, we have to work on understanding what is going to work best for each athlete. If you want to be a good punter, you need to find a coach that knows how to work with your strengths to develop your punting style.

There are however, a few things that you should consider as technical goals each time you step on the practice field. These are things that seem to survive technical calibrations of most good punters.

Assuming you are right footed . . .

1. Head high and slightly forward.
2. Chest high and out of the way at impact.
3. Shoulders parallel to the line of scrimmage at the drop of the ball.
4. Receive the ball with thumbs up and fingers forward.
5. Drop ball on the same line drawn from your right hip (if you are a righty) to the target.
6. Ball attitude at drop is angled slightly right to left. (New punters should angle that ball more extremely right to left)
7. Ball attitude at drop is angled for the nose of the ball to be slightly down.
8. Kicking leg comes straight up from the ground to the waist at impact.
9. Allow your leg to finish over your left shoulder. Going straight up to finish is almost impossible without hurting yourself.
10. Allow the torque created by your punting leg to rotate your body slightly to the left at finish. Don’t fight that.
11. Hold on to the ball before you drop it as long as you can.
12. Step straight down the target line.
13. If your left foot leaves the ground make sure you jump straight up and come straight down.
14. Hit the ball on the hard bone at the top of your foot.
15. Concentrate on hitting the ball up, not out. If you are hitting it right, it will go out…don’t worry about that.

Hit em straight!

          — Coach Crocker —