John Lord, a sophomore at Boston College, was in Scottsdale Arizona from Saturday until today for a One on One Punting Lesson. John is in competition for the punting job at Boston College this fall and is here to refine his punting technique.
Shown in the photo above, John started punting in the first lesson with the dreaded, nose up drop and shaded outside his hip. In the last 3 months a lot of punters have passed through Scottsdale with the same problem; not placing the ball on the table with the ball directly in front of their punting leg.
We immediately addressed his problem by introducing John to the Drop Progression Drill. Below you can see John working the drill with a flat drop.
The second part of the drill is to place the ball on the table, directly out in front of the punting leg with the ball tilted in slightly.
John had a fairly high drop table, so we worked to get the ball on the table at the top of his numbers or slightly below his shoulder. The higher the drop the more bad things can happen. In the photo below you can see John with his normal drop.
After the first lesson we analyzed and reviewed the video and the flaws I saw in John's technique became crystal clear to him. Like most kickers and punters John had not seen his technique close up on video until his One on One lesson this weekend.
The other problem John had was placing the ball outside his hip and wiping the ball. John hit a lot of (SNO) spiral nose over punts but way out to the left. I explained to John, if we could get him to place the ball on the table directly in front of his punting leg and walk or drift slightly off the line he would punt with more power (SNO) spiral nose over punts to his power zone.
In the photo's above and below you can see the drill we worked on to accomplish this goal. John worked hard on this drill and it started to pay dividends. At the end of the second session John was turning over almost every punt to his power zone.
The last thing we worked on were get off times. John was now punting extremely well but had slow get offs. His slow get offs ranged from 1.48 to 1.65. Slow, real slow!
I introduced John to my molding drill and explained why his get offs were slow. Too many wasted movements. Unnecessary movement with his feet and hands. We worked the drill for several minutes and put the clock back on John.
As we proceeded, John's get offs improved but his punting got worse. I told him to relax and we worked some more drills. He equated try to get faster get off times by punting faster. I told him he must be more efficient. We worked some more drills.
John finished with two sets of (SNO) spiral nose over punts with much improved get offs. He was now punting with 1.3 to 1.4 get offs with good power zone punts.
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