Kickoff For Show!
Writing the tips every week is great therapy for me. I sometimes get very worked up watching players with lots of talent perform below their immediate potential. Yes, ‘immediate potential’ is the term that I use when I see an obvious flaw, that when corrected, could make a kicker or punter IMMEDIATELY better. This week, I was at the NFL Europa combine and the Aguiar Kicking Combine. Both were held about 10 miles from each other in Tampa, Florida. There was a lot of talented kickers and punters at both camps. I was most impressed with the kickoff examples that I saw. I got very worked up. There is a process to kicking off and learning to kick off properly. Many of the kickers just did not seem to get it. I saw many right footed kickers kicking the ball right and never considering any breeze that may have been present. Moreover, there were 21 NFL scouts watching everything. Most important, the kickers were not being told to hit the ball in any particular part of the field. They could have done anything they wanted. That being the case, kick with the wind when possible, and righties should hit the ball to the left corner and the lefties should hit the ball to the right corner.
- If you want to impress the coaches on your team, give em your best shot.
- If they let you choose which end zone to kick toward, pick the direction that will put the wind at your back.
- If they tell you to kick toward the end zone of their choice, test the wind and try to kick to the side where you have the most wind
support.
- If they don’t tell you to kick right, center or left, kick it left if you are right footed and right if you are left footed.
- Remember, beat that ball as hard as you can. When there is no penalty for accuracy you might as well just knock the bladder out
of the ball.
Technique wise, just remember one thing . . . make sure you step over your plant foot after contact. If you don’t, you are not transferring all of the loaded energy in your hips to your foot. Most of the kickers did not do this. Our own EJ Cochrane has learned this lesson well though. He was the only kicker in the group that I saw in practice that consistently put his ball to the end zone. EJ is a lefty, where do you think the ball was going?
Kickoffs don’t usually get practiced often. It is dangerous for an athlete to practice kickoffs when not supervised by an experienced coach. In my opinion, it is the only way a kicker can get hurt.
Most position coaches don’t get this part of kicker training. Make your head coach read this tip. Print it and hand it to him. He needs to know the danger of practicing kickoffs. And he needs to know that if you are a right footed kicker, it is a good thing when he calls for ‘kick off left’. A young kicker without much instruction will have a difficult time supporting ‘kick off right’ strategy for the bomb squad.
