College football Week 6 thread

Whenever I see that formation, I keep thinking the punter is going to boot the ball up one of his blocker's ass.

 

When LSU went to that approach around 2005 or 2006, the guys on one of the radio postgame shows regularly called it Punt Ugly. If memory serves, after two or three years of it, I compared it to the same span with the more traditional alignment, and the rate of blocked punts was no worse (and maybe even better).

I asked the special teams coach about it. The details are hazy, but the thinking is more about how it helps with coverage, not necessarily with protection, and that the difference in the latter is negligible. You put fast guys on the line, not big linemen who block, so they can get downfield faster and cover better (since they don't really have any traditional blocking duties on the punt). It's more about slowing the guy down a half a second than about straight-up blocking him. If you have a fast guy who can snap, that's ideal. The idea is to get 6-7 guys down the field as fast as possible. But the plan is only as good as your timing -- and your "shield" guys in front of the punter. If things go wrong, especially with spacing, you're in trouble.

Another selling point is it takes up far less time in practice than traditional punt protection drills, and coaches love that aspect of it. Supposedly, it's a much more efficient system in many ways. It was a convoluted answer, and I'm not sure I bought all of it, but there was a method to it. I don't think I ever compared net punting averages during the same spans, but I should have (although there were different punters, so there's that). To me, the bottom line is field position -- assuming you don't have a disaster. But I loved the name Punt Ugly.

And yeah, I don't know who came up with it.

 

Reading this makes me think about Lou Holtz and what he told his punt team.

"If you hear "BOOM" run down the field. If you hear "Boom Boom" turn around because
the punt was blocked."

 

The juco I cover had three punts blocked in one game using that formation. Two of them happened in the fourth quarter and led to two scores. Because no matter how many people are blocking where ever they're blocking, it doesn't help if the long snapper can't get the ball to the punter cleanly.

 

As I'm sure you've also noticed, LSU consistently wins field position against its opponents. This punt formation is a big reason considering how many great athletes they can put on the field in coverage situations.

Their personnel suits it perfectly. Jarvis Landry was one of the nation's best special teams players before he became one of the SEC's best receivers. I wanna say that J.C. Copeland has been one of the big body "shield" guys.

 

I remember LSU going to that during their 2003 national championship season. I remember it because they had huge gaps in the line, so it seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. Finally, in the national championship game against Oklahoma, they got one blocked near the goal line to set up a cheap touchdown. Damn near cost them the game.