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The full text of “A Punting Philosophy” by Jared Hottle, from the Vol 3 — Winter 2018 issue.
Page 34T here are many punt formations used in football and most of them work. It is important to stay committed to whatever formations or philosophies you use and work to adjust as the need for adjustments comes up. At Dakota State, we teach the shield punt. For me, it is the easiest to teach as far as rules for each individual player goes and allows our players to be athletes on the field and play fast.
Furthermore, it gives us the best chance to get coverage downfield and allows our snapper to focus on snapping and not on protection. Punt Formation As most coaches know special teams often takes a backseat as far as practice and preparation time goes for a football team getting ready to play a game in a week. I try to use that to our team’s advantage by giving multiple looks and blocking schemes to a team by keeping the rules for our guys as basic as possible.
We carry as many as 6 punt formations into a given game but we will never change the protection rules on our guys, just alignments. The idea behind this is that teams who try to scheme up a block or a return will be forced to adjust to our align - ments and take them out of whatever advantage they think they can gain.
They only can practice so much on our alignments and formations and unless they want to make 6 different formation checks for their punt team, they will often stay basic and just hope to do the best they can. Below are two of our common looks. Notice the shield will stay intact which allows us to keep all our basic rules. We have automatic checks off some of our looks as well to take advantage of a team who is cheating to one side or the other.
A Punting Philosophy By Jared Hottle, Special Teams and Wide Receivers Coach, Dakota State University
Page 35Protection Scheme We run a hybrid zone protection scheme. We have a call to make everybody block the man to their right as well as a call to make everybody block to their left. We want them ripping through the defender to the call side to stop the vertical push. If they cannot rip across the face of the defender, they need to drive them sideways and widen their highway to the punter. I call it a hybrid zone protection scheme because we allow them some autonomy within the system.
We first look to our zone side gap, then we look for a head-up defender. If neither exists, we block “back” or away from the call. This must be communicated with the players around them and sometimes allows us to get maximum protection on interior gaps. I think you are asking for trouble if you always pinch and always block out with your shield scheme. With a pinch team, you leave your edges or B-Gaps exposed and with a block out scheme you leave your A-Gaps exposed to stunts and twists into the shield.
Additionally, if you always block and kick to the boundary, it is easy to detect and scheme against from a return or block perspective. In regards to coaching the shield, I think shield punt coaches can get caught up on man assignments to make sure the shield has an idea of who they will need to pick up pre-snap. We do not worry about that. I tell our shield to stay square and protect inside out. To me there are too many ways to put a shield player in conflict if we give him a specific guy to look for.
I would rather him sit back and react. This plays right into our zone scheme because our front line does not have to think about whom they need to let go to the shield and our shield is not committing to a certain player pre-snap. Matching Personnel to Scheme I think the best thing you can do as a coach of special teams is hone into exactly what you are looking for at each position and put guys in spots to succeed. If a guy is a great cover guy but horrible at protection, we make him a displaced gunner.
If a guy is a tad slow but a great blocker we will put him at guard. If we have a punter who can get the ball off quickly but does not get the hang time we want, we will put guys on the front line who are faster cover - age guys and will widen their splits a little bit. If we have someone who doesn’t get the ball off as fast as we want, we will move him with rugby kicks and get guys more focused on protecting.
The shield is the one area where I think you need to spend the most time and get those guys focused on protecting inside and not jumping the first outside rusher they see. When a punt return team sees that, they will try to get the shield guy to step out and run a fast guy right inside of him. Additionally, they are the ones that need to know what you are looking for to call protections, check out of certain things, and make the automatic checks.
We like getting a little more athletic in the shield to be able to run fakes and adjust in space. We use mostly defensive ends and tight ends.
Page 36Fakes and Offensive Punts In addition to our punt formations I like to carry one unique formation with shifts and motions to have in our back pocket if we need a big play or need to neu - tralize a punt block scheme. We keep the protection very simple and try to hide eligible receivers by mov - ing someone slightly off the ball and putting a shield member on the ball. I also always carry an offensive punt into a game.
You never know when a long snapper or punter will get hurt or when a punt returner will have his way with you or when your protection will break down for whatever reason. For these reasons, I find it imperative to have a way to punt the ball with your offense on the field. Teams, more than likely, cannot risk putting a returner back and if you teach your quarterback to get top spin on the ball, you should be able to down it nicely.
Self-Scout and Tendency Breaking With as simple as your punt scheme likely is, it is im - portant to break a tendency now and again against teams. It is important to do a comprehensive self-scout to check your tendencies. The self-scout should in - clude: kick call, kick direction, hash, and kick formation (if you have multiple).
The ways in which we break tendencies are as follows: kick and protect both to the field and the boundary, kick and rugby kick away from gunners, and by putting gunners into the boundary as well as to the field. Return Team’s Body Language One thing we spend a great deal of time on is teaching our punt team to read the body language of a return team.
We try to get an advantage on what each indi - vidual return team member is doing based off his body language but often they can be classified in 3 ways: 3-Pt Track Stance = We assume all these guys are coming for the block and we must use great technique to get them blocked. 2-Pt Receiver Stance = Could come, could not come. We assume they are coming but we should be able to get them cut-off. 2-Pt Square Stance = Are not coming, or at least not coming with enough speed to block a kick.
We will look to work a wide receiver type release on these players as they are most likely “hold-up” players. As we look at the picture below we will count the fur - thest inside and furthest outside guys as a 2-pt square stance and will work releases on them. The 3 interior guys are 2-pt receiver stances and we will assume they are coming for the block. In the picture below we see everyone in a 3-pt stance. When we get that, we will assume everyone is coming.
The chances of everyone coming for the block is slim but even if they do not come they are not in a great position coming from a 3-pt stance to come to balance and block in space down the field. We believe in the shield punt and have made it work for us. Whatever you do, believe in it and make it work for you.
No matter your scheme, I think if you can think one step ahead by doing due-diligence in film study and self-scouting and can get your guys thinking one-step ahead by seeing body-language and anticipating what they are going to do before the snap, you can help them have great success on your punt team. About the Author: Jared Hottle is the offensive coor - dinator, receivers coach and coordinates the punt and punt return team at Dakota State University.
In his three years coordinating the punt team, he has had an all-conference punter twice and Dakota State has been ranked in the Top-25 in punting yards. Follow him on Twitter at @CoachHottle.
