More Ways to Catch a Kick in Football

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sean Hobson, for Expert Village. What we want to talk about now are a couple of things not to do when returning kicks. There are a few different balls we want to make sure we don't catch. The first is, if you are returning a punt or a kick off and you're standing back at your 10 yard line to take the kick, the ball goes up, you have to step back inside your five yard line and the ball is still coming to you, you want to let that go. You don't ever want to catch a ball on the five yard line. Let that go because it will go into the end zone and you'll be able to bring the ball back out on the 20 yard line instead of the receiver having to do a lot of work. If the ball is kicked up above your head you never want to receive a ball going backward. This is what it will look like (video demo). It will be very hard for a guy to go back and get that ball over the top. Either he'll miss it or if he catches it his back is now to the defense. He has to turn around and pick up the defense. That's not good. If we have a short kick we never want the receiver to have to come up and field it low. There's a chance his balance will be off. There's a chance he could miss the ball, he could kick it with his knee. Even if he makes the catch he has to pick himself up and run it. The last one we don't want to field is a ball that hits and takes a hard bounce. You never want to come up and field that hard bounce because it could come up and hit you in the shoulder, in the shins, in the knees and kick off. That's very hard to catch. You always wan to catch it on a big hop so you can gather it in and return the kick. Those are just a few kicks that you do not want to take."