Rayner's record kickoff a chronic counter's dream

	Dave Rayner has done much better with kickoffs than his predecessor in Green Bay, Ryan Longwell. AP
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The date was Sept. 17, 2006. The Packers were playing the Saints in Lambeau Field, and with 4:18 left Green Bay scored a touchdown to cut the Saints' lead to seven points.

"Too much time left for an onside kick," Terry Donahue said on FOX.

It didn't mean much to me at the time, but the fact that Packers coach Mike McCarthy agreed with that observation was responsible for an NFL record being set -- a landmark record, a blockbuster, one that might never be topped.

Dave Rayner got set to kick off for Green Bay. He is 6-foot-2, 210 pounds, 23 years old. Born in Rochester, Mich., on Oct. 26, 1982, a Scorpio. Perhaps that latter designation has something to do with the feat he accomplished on Sept. 17, because they say Scorpios occasionally are prone to unusual achievements. As an Oxford, Mich., high school senior he was named to the Detroit News Dream Team, and I'm sure that was a happier time for him than this last offseason was. After handling Indianapolis Colts kickoffs for 14 games, he was cut, re-signed and then cut for keeps when Adam Vinatieri was signed.

He was an out-of-work rookie, but the Packers liked his leg strength, so they decided they could keep an extra man on the roster and allow themselves the luxury of a kickoff specialist. As it turned out, he became the field goal man, too.

Rayner kicked off to the Saints. Foot met ball. "It was the sweetest hit I've ever made in my life," he told me a few days later.

The ball rose like a Tiger Woods four-iron. It kept climbing, finally landing deep in the end zone for a touchback.

"Really crushed that one," Ron Pitts said on TV.

I looked at my stopwatch. Yes, I time kickoff hang times. I time punts, too, and national anthems and anything else worth timing. And count anything worth counting. Rayner's number had to be off. Damn stopwatch. Always breaking down. The watch said that he had hung his kickoff 5.12 seconds. Can't be right. A punt with that kind of hang time is a boomer. You might see one out of 20 with a hang like that. And punts stay in the air almost a full second longer than kickoffs do.

The highest hang time I'd ever recorded was 4.64 by Tampa Bay's Michael Husted against the Bears in 1993 in the old Tampa Stadium. Husted was an underrated powerhouse kicker. His monster kickoff came a week before he set a club record with a 57-yard field goal against the Raiders. It was also the longest in the NFL that season.

I was at that Bucs-Bears game when Husted boomed that kickoff. In the locker room afterward I congratulated him on it.

"Yeah, and you know what one coach told me?" he said. "He told me he didn't want me hanging 'em too high because then our coverage would overrun it. Like it's a bad thing if our cover guys get there and hang around the returner while he's catching the ball."

He shook his head. "Freakin' coaches," he said.