Aussie Kickers Turning NFL Upside Down

Australian kicker Brandon Aubrey

In football, the act of kicking is akin to taking a tool back to the Rent All. Very boring but also very necessary. For the most part it’s a simple delivery of the football (and possession) from one team to the other and, while the return of the football (the runback) after the punt may be exciting, the punt itself never is. At least, historically.

Until now, that is.

That would due to some of the revolutionary things going on in the NFL and you can wholeheartedly thank the Australians for that. They’re quite literally re-inventing the art of kicking, and in particular, punting.

It happens quite rarely in sports - the re-invention of a seemingly menial part of the game - but when it does, it ushers in a new way of looking at the technique and the strategies that surround it.

For most of football’s history, punting, and kicking in general, were simply just a necessary evil. Basically you just just booted the ball as hard and as high as you could.

Go back to the early days of placekicking and you’ll see it was just a big dude lined up squarely behind the ball with the sole intention of transferring his weight into and right through the football. Just a brute force approach to a game of brute force.

The only significant change to the world of kicking came in the 1970’s when somebody came up with the idea of kicking the ball similar to the way soccer players kick the ball. That is, by using an angled, sweeping full-leg motion, rather than the old, step straightforward and boot it method.

The game of football had (finally) welcomed in a different strategy on how to kick a football, and that's precisely what’s happening now.

With the current increase in the NFL's international popularity more people from more places are trying their hand at the skills of the game. Punting, it would seem, meshes perfectly with the Australian sporting life. Specifically Aussie Rules Football.

The Australian Football League (AFL) is a mashup of rugby, soccer and American football (that I still don’t fully understand by the way). AFL players dress like soccer players, hit like football players and interestingly enough, use a ball similar in size and shape to the American football.

What’s most interesting in this fusion of the sports is how similar the fundamentals for kicking in the AFL are to those for punting in the NFL. Unlike soccer players, who use a round ball that they aren’t permitted to touch with their hands, Aussie Rules effectively players do everything an NFL punter can, plus a few things more.

This means it's not difficult for Aussies to adapt to the American game, and even better, revolutionize it. Which is exactly what they've done.

NFL punting (thanks to the Aussies) isn’t just about aim, distance and hang time anymore. It now includes more nuance in the form of angles, controlling the spin on the ball, and in finding unique ways to deaden it upon impact.

Today punting has become very similar to golf in the fact that the football doesn't just land. It hits the ground complete with the intended bounces and backspins.

These changes not only provide a greater benefit to the kicking team - since they have a much better idea of what to expect once the ball gets close to landing - but it also does a masterful job at confusing the receiving team who is now trying to field kicks that are annoyingly spinning in all sorts of strange directions.

As you can expect, this renaissance has made Australian punters a highly-valued. That translates directly into the employment of course - there are four Aussie kickers currently in the NFL as well as 61 in the top tier of the NCAA - but also into the development and/or conversion of Aussie rules players into American football punters. ProKick Australia, an academy in Melbourne, is developing the next generation of NFL kicking talent in the Land Down Under.

Yep, that means little Australian boys are growing up wanting to be the next Ray Guy (the only punter who’s been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame) rather than (insert AFL legend's name here).

By meshing their Aussie sporting sensibility with this strange American game they have - dare we say it - made punting cool again.

Although it never really has been.

Until now, that is.