I first met Mike Vanderjagt in 1990 when I was coaching special teams at Long Beach State for the legendary and Hall of Fame Coach George Allen. We tried to recruit Mike, who was an excellent combination punter/kicker out of Allan Hancock JC in Santa Maria California. He decided to attend West Virginia where he had an outstanding College career.Mike holds two NFL records:
1) Forty-one consecutive field goals and
2) he is the All-Time leading field goal percentage leader in the NFL with an 86.4 percentage as of Nov. 20th 2006.
During our two day training session last week here in Scottdale Arizona we worked on three things: 1) the one-step drill, 2) his field goal technique, and 3) his kickoff technique. We worked to improve not only his distance but also, his consistency on his kickoffs. We accomplished all three goals.Mike was a pleasure to work with.
At the end of our kicking workout Mike punted a bunch of balls. I was amazed on how good of a punter he still is today. He punted as good if not better than many of the punters playing on Sunday. Mike had two great days of kicking.
Mike is too good not to be on one of the NFL teams. It's a real shame!
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