Teicher: Colquitt could kick Chiefs' punting woes

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http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansas...s/11951855.htm

Colquitt could kick Chiefs’ punting woes

By ADAM TEICHER
Kansas City Star

The high, arching punts of rookie Dusty Colquitt were an offseason delight for the Chiefs. His kicks gave them reason to believe their punting problems of recent years are finished.

But the show doesn’t end when Colquitt’s kicks begin their journey back to earth. They inevitably do a dance that leaves returners staggering just to make a clean catch, much less bust loose for long yardage.

Colquitt’s kicks consistently baffled even veteran and sure-handed returners such as Dante Hall and Eddie Kennison. In offseason practices, both players fought Colquitt’s punts with all they had.

They had little success. Their attempts to field the kicks were a collection of drops, fingertip grabs, last-second lunges and belated efforts to merely get out of the way of the falling ball.

“Dante dropped one every day, and Dante never drops one,” coach Dick Vermeil said. “This is the first time he’s ever had problems. He told me he’s been using his game-day concentration and he was still having problems.”

That’s just the sort of mayhem the Chiefs had in mind when they drafted Colquitt near the end of the third round. One of the biggest reasons was returners’ inability to get a consistent grip on his punts.

“We saw it when we watched him in college,” said special teams coach Frank Gansz Jr. “A lot of returners were mishandling his punts. I stood under a few of them when I went to work him out. I’ve seen a lot of punts, but this guy’s punts move around a lot.”

It’s a new and exciting phenomenon for the Chiefs, who have gone through a dizzying collection of mediocre punters since Vermeil arrived in 2001.

It’s nothing new for Colquitt, who as Gansz indicated was tough to catch in college at Tennessee.

“I know that if guys are catching my punts and they’re not having much problem with them, there’s something in my technique that I need to tweak,” Colquitt said. “I kind of have a different way of doing things than most punters. I hold the ball at a little bit of an angle. I tilt the nose up a little bit, and when the ball gets to its peak, it doesn’t really turn over. That makes it a difficult ball to catch.”

Colquitt is left-footed. Left-footed punts rotate differently and take some getting used to.

“But that doesn’t explain all of it, because we’ve played against lefties before,” Gansz said. “It’s not like that kind of guy is new to us. Both Eddie and Dante have great ball skills. They know how to handle lefties.”

Colquitt also generally gets good hang time on his punts.

“Any time you see a ball up that high and there’s any kind of wind at all, it’s going to do some pretty funny things,” Gansz said. “The returner spends a lot of time first of all just trying to figure out whether he’s going to catch the thing.

“It’s definitely going to be an advantage for him and for us. A turnover in the kicking game is always huge.”

Running back Sam Gado had the misfortune of being sent back as the returner during the Chiefs’ spring rookie camp. The poor fellow had no idea what he was in for.

“I don’t know what it is about his punts,” Gado said. “It just hangs up in the air so high that it’s hard to adjust. You almost lose your bearings a little bit. You just can’t get a good grasp or a good feel for where it’s going to land. I was back there for about 10 or 12 of his punts. The first eight or nine, I dropped every single one of them.”

That shook Gado’s confidence as a returner. It lasted until the Chiefs began a series of full-squad practice sessions.

Now he knows his problems had more to do with Colquitt instead.

“At first, I thought it was just me,” Gado said. “But then I saw Dante Hall and Eddie Kennison having problems with it. That made me feel a lot better.”