Saints signed P Ben Graham, formerly of the Jets. Graham, a former Australian Football League punter, will make his Saints debut on Sunday in London, England. He replaces Steve Weatherford. Good for Ben. I always liked him. He was very nice in training camp each year and an overall good person as many Jets are. Sadly..........He could not punt very well.
Something ironic about the fact that we would have won the Raider game if Leon was able to hold on to the spinning Rugby style punt. Graham said when he was with the Jets they tried to coach him out of Rugby style punts and tried to make him kick spirals. If Graham goes back to being good once he gets away from this CS then this is just more fuel for the anti-Mangini fire.
^Mangini is stubborn sometimes I swear. Luckliy Reggie Hodges has turned out to be a find. His punts have been pretty good
I still have not forgiven the JETS for the whole Aguilar over Craig Hentrich thing. We have been haunted ever since.
If anyone rememebrs Ben Graham was a great punter when he came into the NFL, he put that crazy spin on the ball and everyone here loved him. A good guy but I'm not sure what happened to him.
Ben played Australian Rules Football. And in another case of a poor Special Teams Coach he changed the punt to a spiral kick. DUMB!!!
I didn't know that Mangini changed the way Graham kicked.... what the fuck is wrong with this CS changing or not adjusting when it is needed and not needed? I'm beginning to become a darksider because of this shit.
All we heard about was how his punts were difficult to catch and I don't recall even one fumble by an opponent from one of his punts and that includes '05 when he was good pre-Mangini.
I agree LV, now Lechler does the end over end punt and it works, I used to watch Graham at practice and he would regularly pump out 70 yarders, then he stopped with the end over end punt....
It's remarkable to me that Mangini is blamed for everything that hasn't worked out on his watch. Graham's gross averages were 43.7 (pre-Mangini), 44.2, 43.3, and 43.3 (post-Mangini); his net averages were 37.9, 37.8, 36.6, 36.1; his percentages inside the 20 were 24.3%, 36.1%, 34.8%, 14.3%; his percentages of touchbacks were 8.1%, 15.3%, 10.6%, 0%; his percentages of kicks that were returned were 48.6%, 38.9%, 47.0%, 64.3%; the average return yardage when kicks were returned was 8.5, 7.3, 8.5, 11.2. As junc said, I don't recall a single one of his "helicopter" kicks leading to a muff or fumble. Where exactly is there the slightest evidence of Mangini "hurting" him (and wouldn't it be Westhoff, anyway, the guy everyone loves?)? His best year was 2006 (under Mangini), his 2007 was almost identical to his 2005, and his 2008 was poor because most of his punts were returned, and when they were it was for long yardage. He's going to be 35 in less than 2 weeks - maybe he's just running out of steam and isn't that good any more?
Hodges is definitely more accurate. What they did to Graham baffles me....at the end one major complaint was lack f hang time, along with lack of accuracy.....but when he was first brought in with the Aussie style kicks, the hang times were huge. Why make the guy change? Just so he can get 2 out of 10 instead of 1 out of 10 inside the 20 yard line? wtf?
if anyone was to get any blame for changing the way graham punts it would be westhoff. but i think he may be off limits, that or its just fun to blame everything that has ever gone wrong on the hc after a loss.
I don't think the blame was going on Mangini it was going on Westhoff who changed the way Graham punted the ball. Remember it was Mangini that discovered Graham while in Australia and raved about his kicks. If he goes on to average 45-49 yard punts with the Saints we'll know what happened.
Westhoff probably wanted him to change his punting style because it was near-impossible to plan a punt coverage scheme around a ball that was so unpredictable. Yardage is only part of the punting game.
