How deliberate mis-kicks changed one of sport’s strangest positions

Darren Bennett played for more than 10 years in the NFL. For some, that does not make him a footballer.

The 6ft 5in Australian tells the story of when he was introduced to a great Green Bay Packers linebacker, who asked him what position he played.

“I said ‘punter’,” says Bennett, who moved to the United States as a 29-year-old after a successful career as an Australian Rules footballer.

“Ach,” replied the linebacker, a two-time Super Bowl winner. “You’re not even a real football player.”

“And he just walked away,” laughs Bennett, who spent most of his NFL career with the San Diego Chargers in the 1990s. “I had no credibility with him at all.”

Thirty years later and attitudes remain much the same towards one of sport’s strangest positions and the players used in the specific instance when a team kick the ball away to clear their lines.

On average, an NFL match features 153 plays, with a punter being called upon for eight of them.

The players may only spend about three minutes on the field, which is not really much time to get noticed – even if you are a history-maker.

“I go walk down in Baltimore and nobody knows who I am,” says retired punter Sam Koch, who played a franchise-record 256 games for the Baltimore Ravens.

Out of the 250 or so players drafted every year, maybe one or two are punters. They are one of the lowest paying positions in the sport and only one punter has ever been drafted in the first round.

Such is the anonymity accompanying the position that during the 2012 draft the selection of a punter in the third round prompted disbelief and a leading US sports broadcaster to deliver a message to the American people: “Punters are people too.”

That message soon became a meme and became emblazoned on merchandise.

But while people haven’t been caring, punting has been changing.

During a game in the primetime Sunday night slot 10 years ago Koch – inspired by Bennett’s Aussie Rules-style punts – transformed it.

But at the time it looked to the 20 million TV viewers like he was just playing very, very badly.