He doesn't have to kick the ball before the line of scrimmage because when a player punts the ball he forfeits possession of the ball. In the CFL, the ball can be punted from anywhere on the field by any player, but unlike the NFL, (and similar to rugby) the player that punts the ball can actually recover the ball he has punted as long as he is the first downfield player on his team. I am pretty sure that a ball can be kicked downfield in the NFL, but if you do it, you are giving the ball away.
"f'n idiots"? "fucking clueless"? "sea of morons"? Give me a break. Pardon me for noting that Graham hasn't looked that great, and that the trick play was pointlessly stupid. This post has to be among the most needlessly insulting and offensive I've seen in a long while.
TBJ this is a noticably uncharacteristic type of post for you. I don't see where StatJeff is going with his criticism of Graham though, considering that Ben was like 7th in punting last season.
Its a designed play, I've seen them practice this at Hofstra a couple of times. However, I"ve never seen them run or pass out of it, only punt on the run. Seems to me if this is a potential fake, you might prefer to NOT practice it in the preseason.
Graham will be one of the top punters in the NFL..no worries. Let the record show it was ERIC MANGINI who discovered Ben Graham..EM is money..period!!
I was a Jets Camp last week anf saw Graham throwing the ball, he has a strong arm, hell he looks more like an NFL QB then Ramsey Clemens,and Bolly and I'm tellin ya he can throw better then average...for what it's worth
I remember reading an article about that sort of play. Specifically that there was one small division 1 school that kicked all their punts like that. The idea was that even if the defense is expecting it, there's a chance that holes can open up, and if you have an athetic punter, you can potentially get a first down. If nothing opens up, then you just punt it, no harm done, and your gunners on the outside have more time to get downfield. The kicker in the article said that the running didn't affect his distance, so there wasn't much downside to the strategy. The conclusion at the end of that article was that the strategy had been effective so far and that they suspected that a lot of other colleges were going to start trying it out. This was like 3 years ago though and I haven't heard anything since.
These are the two things about Graham I said in this thread: In response to NYMagpies' post "ive got confidence in him " I said this: Pretty clear that I was talking about the preseason, and that I'm not really worried about it, wouldn't you say? In the two games he has had 10 punts; five have been very good (three kicks downed inside the 10, two kicks more than 45 yards), and five have been quite poor (three touchbacks on kicks from inside the 45, one kick for 15 yards, and one kick for 8 yards). "For whatever reason, he's been pretty inconsistent so far in the two preseason games" seems to me to be dead on, in fact, so the comment apparently aimed at me wasn't only insulting and offensive, it was also simply wrong.
Wow, that was abit excessive, don't you think? Statjeff may not be pleased with Graham's latest performance, but at least he backed it up with solid reasoning. Although I still don't think there's any cause for worry, he does bring up valid points that Graham hasn't been as dominant as he can be.
WEll I agree with you that we need not worry about Graham, if tha's what you mean. Only criticism of him that I have is that he doesn't place his punts inside the 20 very well...they are always going into the end zone.
