TSR’s Punter of the Week:
Marquette King – Oakland Raiders
Who is he?
King is the NFL’s only black punter at the moment. Now-deceased Raiders owner Al Davis took great pride in special teams and so King fits right in on a franchise that has a rich punting history. King’s exceptional raw talent allowed the Raiders to let punter Shane Lechler get away via free agency after 12 great seasons in Oakland. On March 23, 2013, Lechler signed with the Houston Texans. At Raiders training camp this past summer, King narrowly beat out Chris Kluwe for the starting punt job. Kluwe is probably the best active punter without a NFL roster spot. Kluwe tried out with both the Bears and Bills in recent weeks but remains a free agent. King attended Fort Valley State University, a small division 2 school in Georgia. He went undrafted and signed with the Raiders before camp in 2012 but did not play last season. King turns 25 years old in two weeks. He wears uniform #7. On his personal Twitter page, King says his favorite color is “camo” and says he likes to “put lemon pepper on anything.”
The King stat line vs. the Chargers 10-6-13:
6 punts. 297 yards total. 49.5 yards per. 42.7 net.
The punts in detail:
1. With a pink-colored hand towel hanging from his waist and two wristbands of the same color pulled up just below his elbow, King came onto the field for his first punt of the game with nearly nine minutes gone in the second quarter. He’s physically imposing with a strong-looking upper body. The ball was snapped by Jon Condo from Oakland’s 28-yard line which for this game fell on infield dirt left in place for the Athletics who played baseball on the same surface the night before. King (right-footed) belted a long one that flew about 65 yards in the air. Chargers return man Eddie Royal camped under it at his own 22. Raiders gunner Taiwan Jones was swift on the scene and his looming presence appeared to scare Royal just as he was about to haul the ball in. Royal stole a late glimpse of Jones and lost concentration on the job at hand. He muffed the punt and Oakland cover guy Chimdi Chekwa appeared to get first hands on the pigskin as a big pile of competing bodies fought for it. The field judge attempting to enter the scrum for a look was improperly impeded from doing his job by Kevin Burnett of the Raiders and so the field judge threw a pink flag on the play. Unnecessary roughness. All the pink stuff is part of the NFL’s effort to raise awareness about breast cancer. The key aspect of this play wasn’t King’s distance on the punt as much as Jones’ ability to cover it. Royal seemed to expect running room and panicked at the sight of Jones. The turnover led to a Raiders trey from kicker Sebastian Janikowski (Seabass) and made the game 17-0 Silver and Black.
2. Just outside Seabass range, the Raiders opted punt with 48 seconds left in the half just inside midfield. King stood hunched over on the dirt and got too much leg into it after a quick two-step approach. The ball landed five yards deep in the end zone for a touchback. 46 yards on the punt but just 26 on the net. Not what you want in that spot but surprisingly, Phil Rivers and the Bolts took a knee and walked into the locker room down 17-nil at the half.
3. King swings his long arms before receiving the snap and leans forward more than any punter I’ve seen. Standing a full 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage, his first punt of the second half came after QB Terrelle Pryor took a sack, pushing the Raiders just outside of Sea-Bass waters. King took something off his ball strike given a launch point five yards shy of the midfield stripe. Royal feigned readiness to receive at his own ten and signaled fair catch but then stepped away to let the ball drop. This was an attempt by Royal to trick an Oakland cover man into making contact with the ball. It didn’t work. The ball hit with a thud at the 8 and was downed right there by Kaluka Maiva of the Raiders. It goes in the books as a 34-yard punt with no return but the kick was better than that because of its placement and flat landing.
4. There was an extra step and a half into the approach of King’s fourth punt of the evening. He caught the ball at his own five and really let it loose at about the ten. The hang time was sub-five seconds but the ball sailed well. Royal fair caught at his own 30. It was a fifty-yard punt with no return. If you’re a special teams coach, you sign up for punts like this all day, all season. King has a big leg and it appears he varies the trajectory enough to keep the return man guessing.
5. With the Raiders up two touchdowns, King crushed a long one from his own end zone early in the fourth quarter to keep San Diego from a quick and easy field position premium. The Chargers applied its first meaningful pressure of the game on King but he got it away. The ball traveled 75 yards in the air. On the television broadcast, Ian Eagle initially misidentified return man Keenan Allen but quickly caught his error. Allen deked out a tackler and took it straight upfield to his own 46. It was 64-yard punt and a 21-yard return. Again, King hit a boomer.
6. King’s final punt of the game came with 1:25 to go and the Raiders up ten. His main concern in this instance was not getting blocked. His foot met ball at his own ten. Protection was good. Allen let the ball bounce out of bounds at the San Diego 25. It was a 53-yard punt with no return.
The Sound of a Punt:
Greg Papa has called Raider games on the radio for 17 seasons now. He does a daily sports talk show on the same station that serves as the flagship radio outlet for the Raiders and the A’s. As is often the case with football announcers on radio, Papa doesn’t put much effort into describing the punt play. Instead, he dwells with his booth partner Tom Flores on the third down play. The cut below is an exception. It’s Papa’s call on King’s first punt of the second half which was nicely placed inside the 20. It was heard on San Francisco’s KGMZ-FM (95.7 on the dial) known in the Bay Area as “The Game.”
The Punt-osis:
King can punt it 50 yards per in his sleep. He has struggled to find chemistry with Seabass on holds for field goals. As Steve Weatherford described in great detail in the Times last Sunday, holding for the placekicker requires swift execution and precise timing and ball tilt. Seabass honed his routine with Lechler over their decade-plus together and it will take time for King to do the same. According to written accounts on the subject, King badly wants to succeed at this task and practices it a lot to get better. He wore a batting glove on his left hand and appeared to succeed on all holds vs. the Chargers. Complicating the job is the fact Seabass is a left-footed kicker. There was some consideration given to making backup Raider QB Matt Flynn the new holder but then Flynn got cut. Hopefully King won’t be distracted from his primary mission. He’s an exciting young punter on a team famous for great punters and kickers. King could easily have failed to gain the attention of the NFL given the low-profile college football program he emerged from. Now that he’s on the big stage, the challenge will be sticking around. Good luck, Marquette. May the kicks be deep and the punts be high.