A punt means giving up, and that’s okay
Giving up is for wimps, right? Never giving up is one of the first things we learn as humans. That saying has been plastered all over motivational posters and social media posts for years. Every successful person that has ever lived has never given up. Everyone who has seen their dreams come true has never given up. The thing with sports though? They have some exceptions.
Welcome to football where giving up is allowed, even encouraged. Sometimes not giving up can lead people to label you as an idiot. Giving up can be a smart move. Giving up multiple times in one game can end up giving a team a competitive advantage. It frustrates coaches and fans, but sometimes there is just no other option. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the punt.
Football at its absolute most basic form is pretty simple. One team gets the ball tries to score while the other team tries to stop them. Sounds easy enough? But to discover the maddening world of the punt we need to dig further. In football, there is one team on offense and one defense. The team on offense has ‘possession’ of the football.
The team on offense’s goal is to get down the field and into the end zone to score a touchdown. There are 99 yards from end zone to end zone, but most teams don’t need to go the full 99 yards. Typically it will take a team between 75-50 yards to get into the end zone.
When a team has possession of the ball they start with a set of downs. From wherever they are at on the field, the offense must get ten yards in four downs or ‘tries.’ Say a team gets two yards on first down, three on second down and one on third down. That makes it fourth and four. What can the team do?
Well, they have a few options. They can either go for it and risk turning the ball over if they don’t get it. If they are close enough to the end zone they can attempt a field goal and try and make the drive a mini-success. Or the team can punt. Punting, at its core, is giving up.
A punt means a team snaps it to a fellow player standing ten yards behind him who proceeds to kick the ball as high and far as he can down the field. Awaiting the punt is usually another player on the other team to catch the ball. Wherever the player catches the ball is where the other team will get the ball. If the ball goes into the endzone the other team will retain the ball at their own 25 yard-line
A basic set up for a punt has a punter, five offensive linemen, two gunners on the outside and three blockers in between the linemen and the punter. The lineman help protect the punt from getting blocked. The three blockers do the same thing and serve as the last line of defense for the offense. The two gunners on the outside may have the toughest job of all. All they need to do is sprint down is field as fast as they can well fighting off a defender player or two, and tackle the guy that catches the ball. The punter, well, he punts the ball.
Over a third of NFL drives end in punts. They are an essential part of the game. A team chooses to do so to drive to gain a field position advantage and to minimize risk. If a team is at 4th and 9 inside their own territory and go for it and don’t get it, the other team will get the ball with a great chance to score. So instead, teams choose to punt and make the other team start way downfield. They give up, and it is considered okay, even smart.
Punting is a unique aspect of sports where teams choose to give up. There is nothing else like it. A drive that ends in a punt is a systematic failure that teams spend all offseason trying to avoid as much as possible. But it happens every single game, and in the end, it helps a team win.