How to Pooch Punt a Football

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm John Millar, here with Expert Village to teach you how to punt a football. Now let's talk about a special situation called pooch punting. That's when you offense has gotten pretty far on your own side of the field but you're a little outside field goal range. If you're on the 35 yard line and you kick it 40 yards it goes 5 yards into the end zone. That's a touchback. A touchback is when a punt goes into the end zone or out the back of the end zone. That's a touchback and the ball comes out on the 20 yard line. So, you've wasted 20 yards. You're better off kicking it inside the 10 yard line to pin the opposing team deep in their own territory. That gives them a long field to work with. Usually, most return guys won't ever go back past their own 10 yard line. If it goes over their head they will just let it go. If you are pooch punting and you're kicking it from the 35 yard line you can raise your drop table up a little higher, you can turn the ball at an angle - like a banana kick - to give you more of a sweet spot and raise the nose up a little. What you're trying to do is get a huge hang time and a short kick. You want to kick it really high. You're aiming for the 10 yard line. If you're short it goes only 15 yards, if you're long it's on the 5 yard line but you're staying out of the end zone. That's a good, safe place to aim for, around the 10 yard line. This is going to accomplish one of two things. Either they're going to fair catch it inside the 20 yard line and be pinned deep or they're not going to get it but your team will have enough time to get down there and cover the ball. They can catch it in the air or stop it before it rolls into the end zone. If you're not going to do a high pooch punt you can kick the ball out of bounds. You want the ball to cross that plane at the 10 yard line. That still gives you room to work with on either side, inside the 20 yard line. You can kick it as far as you want; it's about the angle you take. You could be aiming for the stands. That's what a punter does. Pick a spot out of bounds between you and the 10 yard line and try to kick it as far as you can out of bounds. There's no return and the referee will mark the spot where the ball crossed the out of bounds plane. That's a pooch punt. You're trying to pin them deep, you're not trying to kick it as far, you don't want a touchback, you want to pin them inside the 20 yard line."