From the Jets' official site, a year in review article about Ben Graham. Hey, if he learned to punt from scratch two years ago, why can't he do the same with kickoffs, too?
I hope he can. I remember Nugent having one good kickoff last year. One. That just does not cut it. No shame in the guy just kicking field goals.
from what I know of aussie football, the the ball is kicked from a position where the "kicker" holds the football in his own hands and then boots it. A kickoff though is performed from a ground positioned football, which I can imagine is a much bigger difference. However it might be possible for him to learn this, despite the difference.
I'm going to go out on a ridiculous (and maybe not so ridiculous) limb and say that Graham probably has the athleticism to learn how to do this pretty well. Kicking a ball off from a stationary tee has to be fairly easy compared to dropping a moving ball on your foot while maintaining your balance. Graham has the size and strength. In other words, he has the "ass" that Nugent doesn't have (God bless him anyway), so I see no reason why we have to be at all reluctant to work him in the offseason and see how he does with it. It's even something he could do on his own that doesn't require a lot of extra trainers. Put the ball in the tee and boot the shit out of it. Sounds like a natural for Graham.
the quote just tells us that he is new to punting and has grasped it well, so, in the posters opinion, maybe he can have a crack at kickoffs too...i can see the connection, and so can most if not all the posters on this site. other than graham having a go, the solutions to our kick off problems are that nuge needs to increase his leg strength and possibly his technique and I, we, are the last to tell him what to do...im sure westoff and co. are sorting this out as we speak. :finssuck:
I think we can all agree on one thing here... we do need a better kickoff. Oh yeah, I'm aware of other posters quoting hang times and net yards after Nugent's kicks, which seem to indicate that there's more to Nugent's kicks than just the raw distance. Fine and dandy, but a lot of that was ST's doing an excellent job too. What would we have looked like with this same STs if we could have added an extra 5-10 yards on a lot of those KOs? I for one am pretty sick and tired of giving teams those extra 5-10 yards of field position on every KO. Giving opposing offenses a filed position from their 35 means our defense has to work it's butt off all that much more. Something has to change for next year.
You really then missed my posts on Mangold. Ask TBird about them. Also when we have more quality players like Mangold I will be happy to praise them often. What about all my positive comments about BG guess you missed them as well. You can JW12 about them. Fire up your PM messages & check it out for yourself. You also forgot my positive comments of Rhodes. Must have been asleep the last feew weeks
Ok...I'm not sure how many times I need to say this but Ben CANNOT kickoff or kick field goals! He is an excellent punter and I think a great holder...but he cannot kickoff. A few reasons I know this. A. I specifically asked Mike a few weeks ago when the kickoff bashing posts annoyed me. He simply laughed and said "you can kick better than Ben." (I can kick a 30 yarder about once every ten times just to show you how bad I am). B. In camp at the end of one of the pratices Mangini said that if anyone other than Nugent could make 25 yard field goal then the team could have the afternoon practice. Graham did not even attempt the field goal. Three guys did with absolutely no success so Mangini said they got one more chance. Either Nugent kicks a 50 yarder or one more guy tries a 25 yarder. The team selected Nugent who drilled the 50 yarder and they doused him in Gatorade. So hopefully all of this speculation can stop. Graham is an excellent punter but lets not waste anymore time on this one. If you guys hate Nugent's kickoffs that much then talk about bringing in a kickoff specialist.
Someone needs to bring this thread to the attention of the Jets CS. In all seriousness, Graham needs to be working on getting punts down inside the 10, not kicking off.
Do you know Mike W personally? I think the point of the thread was that he's a quick learner with a strong leg, so why can't they teach him to kickoff? No one is suggesting that he can do it right now.
Either that or he couldn't understand WTF you were trying to say since you type in champ-speak and not English. You're the biggest SLW of them all
Well, all I know is, something has to be done. I've supported Nugent from Day One. I supported the pick, I supported the position where we drafted him, I justified the use of the pick and I've been behind him all the way. Hell, I even have his f*cking autograph on my now infamous Jets Ball. Just ask T-Bird or Kurt! They've seen the autograph! I love the kid! He's a terrific field goal kicker and I hope he's with us for a very long time because I see him only improving from here. But this other stuff has to stop. The KO's I mean. It makes me absolutely crazy to watch other teams fielding the ball from their 18-25 yardline.
Does Graham have the leg and athletic ability to learn how to do kick offs? No doubt in my mind that he could, but it won't happen. Place kicking is an entirely different animal. Kicking in Aussie football isn't the same as punting in the NFL, but it isn't drastically different, while place kicking is. I had wondered about Graham working on KO's, but he's still learning how to punt. His rookie year he only used the "drop punt" (Aussie word for it) exclusively. This is the tumbling end over end punt that the Jets' returners had so much trouble catching. Obviously, he spent last off season working on the torpedo, the punt most NFL'ers us, the spiral. He used that much more often than the drop punt this past season. He's also still learning american football rules. I think Graham would need a couple of off seasons to learn how to place kick at an NFL caliber level, and his plate is still pretty full. In addition, I'm pretty sure that a lot of power for place kicking uses the groin muscle more than the thigh with the soccer style all kickers use these days. It's an interesting idea, and if Graham was 25 years old, I could see him adding KO's to his repertoire at some point, but he's what, already 32? 33 next year? I think the Jets will contiue to work with Nugent to improve his KO's, which IMO are not as awful as so many people seem to think.
I had read (in various places, and I wish I had a link for one of them) that kicking a stationary ball from the ground was too alien to Graham, and that he likely wouldn't be tried on kickoffs. However, if punting NFL-style was also something alien to him and he was able to learn and master it from scratch, why not kickoffs, then? That was my point. But if he can't, he can't. Bring back Don Silvestri.
No...... kicking in Aussie football is quite similar to punting in the NFL. Place kicking is not. I can post this again if you like..... your original premise was mistaken if you think NFL style punting was alien to him.
