Feagles scout

An appreciation of the thinking-person's punter

"Do you think anyone will ever break my record?" says Giants' punter Jeff Feagles with considerable animation.

Absolutely not! Uh, what, exactly, is the record you're talking about?

"Most consecutive games played for a punter," he says.

Mathematically, it's a pretty simple record. No games missed in 15 seasons in the league. Fifteen multiplied by 16 games per season equals 240 straight appearances. Only Jim Marshall, at 282, has played in more consecutive contests, and should Feagles break this all-time NFL mark three years hence, there will be all sorts of hullabaloo raised ... a punter's record shouldn't count against that of a real player, etc.

"Punters get pulled muscles, back injuries," the 37-year old Feagles was saying at Monday's mini-camp. "I've managed to avoid those things, knock wood. Why? Either it's because I stay in shape or God just gave me some good muscles.

"Oh, I've come close to missing games. In 1999 I broke my arm making a tackle. See, that's another way punters get hurt. Freak things like that. The break came at the radial head of the elbow. It affected my drop. Well, they gave me a shot and it hurt like a mother on Monday and Tuesday, but I played the next week.

"Last year the defensive end from Philly, N.D. Kalu, came in unblocked and really lit me up. I had the ball way out here, getting ready to make my drop, and it was, 'Oh no!' I just managed to tuck it away. Kalu put his helmet in my chest, then wrapped me up and fell on me, like they do to quarterbacks. I wound up with a sprained sternum clavicular joint in the collarbone, I guess that's what they call it. But I kept playing."

There are three punters in the league now who you could call old, old vets. At 41, Sean Landeta is the most ancient. He's coming off a torn calf muscle, and underwent his sixth team change in the offseason, Eagles to Rams this time. He doesn't boom 'em the way he used to but he's smarter. Tom Tupa is a month older than Feagles. It looked like Tupa's leg was gone when the Jets let him go, but he resurrected his career in Tampa Bay last year -- sort of. Feagles, whose numbers and efficiency never have dipped in 15 years, is the most solid of the three. He's also one of the league's least-known significant players.

"Nobody remembers this, but I was on the University of Miami's national championship team of 1987," he says. "Alonzo Highsmith, Michael Irvin, the Blades brothers, Jerome Brown, Melvin Bratton, Daniel Stubbs ... the list of stars is endless. When I came to Seattle after the '97 season, one of the linebackers was Winston Moss, who'd been on that Hurricanes team. I said, 'How ya doin?' and started talking about the Miami days.

"He said, 'You went to Miami?' He didn't even remember me. That's how insignificant I was. I'll bet if you asked who would have lasted longest from that bunch, I wouldn't even be in the mix."

Why is Jeff Feagles my favorite punter in the NFL? Because he has a brain. He's not just one of those mindless bombers who rockets them into the middle of the end zone from 45 yards out. He can hang 'em or drive them low with a roll, if the conditions dictate, or place them. He studies the return men. He knows every stadium in the league and adjusts accordingly. He has made only one Pro Bowl in his career, and the reason is that most of the selectors are still locked into gross average, whereas Feagles' numbers are keyed to the subtleties. His net yardage -- gross yards minus return yards and touchbacks (20 yards each) -- always is among that of the leaders. His ratio of punts inside the enemy 20 to touchbacks is always weighted heavily in favor of the former. Last year it was 17 to a measly four, second-best in the NFL. It was his fifth season in which he had four or fewer touchbacks, the badge of dishonor among punters. No one in history can match that statistic.

But a statistic that I've always kept on my own, and which Feagles says is the key to his game, is fewest punts returned. The way you figure it is to take the returns, then divide by total number of punts, minus the touchbacks, which you don't want to affect the punts-not-returned figure, to get a percentage of punts run back. In other words, how often does he keep the guy from actually returning a kick? The lower the percentage, the better.

Last year the league average was slightly over 50 percent returned, and 18 of the 33 ranked punters fell into that category. The two Pro Bowl punters, Todd Sauerbrun and Chris Hanson, came in at 61.2 and 54.9 percent, respectively. Feagles' percentage was 29.8, the lowest in the league, with Atlanta's Chris Mohr (37.1) the closest pursuer. Do Pro Bowl selectors ever consider these kinds of statistics? C'mon now.

"I look at it like it's me against the returner and nobody else on the field," Feagles says. "Other guys kick the ball and rely on other people to get him, but I feel that my job is to eliminate him from any return. I'll take a 36 or 37-yard punt that's fair caught any day. That hurts you in the rankings. Maybe if they had an efficiency rating, like they do for the passers ..."

The never-achieved ideal for punters is a 40-yard net, which is like a .400 average in baseball. The idea of being the first punter to cross that threshold quickens the pulses.

"It's my goal," Feagles says. "I think it's definitely a mark that can be broken. Number one, you have to be lucky; number two, you have to have great bullets (the outside men on the coverage team), in case of a return."

Last year the Seahawks' bullets failed Feagles against the 49ers, and he dropped out of the 40-yard picture. He was right at 40 for 10 games, slightly under it after 11. Then in game No. 12, the NFL's leading punt returner, Jimmy Williams, broke an 89-yarder against the Hawks and Feagles' 40-yard net was dead in the water.

The fun part of the punting game, though, for chart freaks such as myself, is the hang time. It's misunderstood. TV announcers regularly throw around the figure of 5.0 seconds, although fivers and above are very scarce commodities. Once, when I was talking to the Dolphins' Reggie Roby at practice -- until Don Shula screamed at me to stop bothering his players while they worked -- I asked him how many fivers he would hang in conditions such as these, punting in sweats, without pads.

"Oh, 10 or 15," he said. So I put a stopwatch on him. Out of 25 punts, only one of them beat the five-second mark. It ain't easy, but it's fun to record, and even a perfectionist such as Feagles gets hung up in hang-time numbers.

"Sure, if I'm watching a game on TV, I'll get the watch out and clock the hang times," he says. "It's a real kick -- if only to laugh at the numbers their timer flashes on the screen."

I first got to know Feagles when he was an Arizona Cardinal (1994-97), when his leg was younger and his hangs were a bit higher, and we used to discuss all aspects of the position. Hang times, of course, were the most fun. I once got a phone call from him at home.

"Five-point-six-four," he said, without even telling me who it was.

"Your ass," I said. The highest I'd ever clocked in my life was 5.52.

"In practice, in sweats," he said, "but it still hung over 5.6. I've got it on tape."

I was doing the NFC East for my scouting reports for Sports Illustrated in those days, and I was due to go down to Arizona in a few days.

"Show me the tape when I get there," I said, "and if it's really 5.64 I promise I'll get it in the magazine -- somewhere."

So when I got to the Cardinals camp in Flagstaff, Ariz., the first guy who greeted me was their video man, and he said, "Feagles wants you to see this," and I looked at tape of a punt that I clocked three times in 5.66, 5.67 and 5.66. With a one-bounce snap from center, too. It wasn't easy, but I managed to get it in my scouting report.

Around the NFL, Feagles receives the most sincere kind of respect a player can get -- in the paycheck. The Seahawks gave him an unheard-of $1 million bonus to sign when they got him from Arizona five years ago. And this season Giants' coach Jim Fassell, who'd been an assistant with the Cardinals when Feagles was there, persuaded the club to get a $520,000 bonus together to bring him to the Meadowlands.

"I started our whole offseason," said Fassell, who has had three different punters in the last three seasons, "by talking about Feagles."

So now they have him, and I have a guy to go over hang times with ... and he's only 25 miles away. It's the start of a very pleasant season.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Paul Zimmerman covers the NFL for the magazine and SI.com. His "Inside Football" column and Mailbag appear weekly on SI.com. To send a question to Dr. Z, click here.

 

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