There’s a narrative Sam Koch tells concerning the day when his eyes opened to the depth of information required to be an elite NFL punter.
It was the spring of 2008, and the Ravens had simply introduced in a brand new particular groups coach, Jerry Rosburg. Koch had been the beginning punter for 2 years and a fairly good one, he thought. So this unfamiliar coach requested him to cite his numbers. “That is very impressive and remarkable for sucking so bad with fundamentals,” Rosburg instructed Koch.
This blunt, doubtlessly awkward alternate planted seeds for the Wolfpack, the detail-obsessed, relentlessly glorious unit that would come with Koch, kicker Justin Tucker and lengthy snapper Morgan Cox.
Now that he’s a Ravens coach, Koch wants solely assume again to his dialog with Rosburg if he needs to empathize along with his pupil and successor, Jordan Stout.
Stout has a one-in-10-million leg and breezy confidence to go together with it, however just like the youthful Koch, he confirmed up in Baltimore pondering he knew extra about punting, and particularly holding for kickers, than he truly did. Like the youthful Koch, his thoughts blew wide-open when he understood how a lot goes into the craft, a minimum of because it’s taught and practiced by the Ravens.
Fortunately for Stout, he can flip to the older Koch as a each day information.
It’s a extremely uncommon relationship by the NFL’s cutthroat requirements: the 40-year-old who thought he was going to be the Ravens’ punter this yr not solely stepped apart gladly, he instantly grew to become counselor to the 24-year-old who nudged him into retirement.
As Koch strode into the foyer of the Ravens’ coaching facility to talk on a current morning, his taut physique and iron handshake nonetheless recommended an athlete in his prime, a notion backed up by the smart-bomb punts he sometimes drops throughout apply drills. But he described the radiating pleasure he feels in his new life, with much less skilled stress, extra time for his household and the prospect to move a long time of accrued knowledge to a new-generation punter whom he likes and respects. Koch performed in additional video games as a Raven than anybody within the 26-year historical past of the franchise, and nobody would have blamed him for resenting Stout’s arrival.
“Not at all,” he mentioned. “I was down at my son’s camp. They gave me a call. And I’m like, ‘Perfect, I’m done with football.’ I’m more happy now than I ever was playing football.”
Stout was nervous about his first communication with Koch as a result of he assumed they’d compete for the job, a lot as Tucker and Billy Cundiff dueled to be the Ravens’ kicker in the summertime of 2012. Instead, Koch’s preliminary textual content message couldn’t have been friendlier.
“The attitude he’s had toward me has just been unbelievable,” Stout mentioned. “He’s never once been negative. He never brings himself up, never compares us.”
Instead of rivals, they’d develop into companions, Stout studying the diligent routine essential to thrive within the NFL’s most rigorous kicking unit and Koch studying to show.
No one has a extra intimate view of their dynamic than Tucker, and he mentioned Koch’s price as a coach was obvious from Day 1: “To have that experience from the inside out, now he’s able to take the 10,000-foot view and apply all of that to what we’re doing now. The value that Sam has added to our operation has been … it’s immeasurable.”
Like most who excel on the place, Stout didn’t develop up realizing punting could be his future. He was a youth soccer star in Abingdon, Virginia, with goals of turning into the following David Beckham. A coach with worldwide expertise instructed Stout’s dad and mom he had by no means seen a 12-year-old strike a soccer ball so cleanly. He didn’t give soccer a lot thought till the quarterback at Honaker High stopped by soccer apply one afternoon looking for kicking candidates. The upperclassman requested Stout to try a 40-yard subject purpose. When he pounded the ball by way of the uprights, a brand new athletic path opened. Not solely did he kick and punt for the college crew, he and his dad, Rodney, made an eight-hour spherical journey to Charlottesville nearly each Sunday so he may prepare with a specialist named Jimmy Howell.
This spoke to the seriousness of Stout’s objectives. Even then, he thought when it comes to faculty scholarships and an expert future.
“I remember in seventh grade, they were having prom, and I gave him the choice: ‘You have a soccer tournament this weekend or you can go to prom,’” Rodney Stout recalled. “But he always chose to go play. He would say, ‘I’d like to go to prom, but I have to go train.’”
“It’s all I ever thought about,” Stout mentioned. “If I didn’t have that mindset, I wouldn’t make it.”
His perception was so robust that it led to friction at Virginia Tech, the place he began his faculty profession as a walk-on, along with his mom working three jobs to assist pay his tuition.
“My goal is to play in the NFL, and I’m not going to do that if I’m not starting,” he instructed a coach initially of his sophomore yr. Don’t fear concerning the execs, the man responded. “So I transferred,” Stout recalled, laughing.
He joined a talent-laden kicking unit at Penn State, finally successful each the kicker and punter jobs and rewriting this system’s punting data. When Ravens kicking coach Randy Brown scouted Stout, his thoughts flashed again nearly 20 years to a exercise he carried out on the University of Nebraska with a man named Sam Koch.
“For me, when you find a punter, you hear a punter,” Brown mentioned, referring to the satisfying thud made when connecting with a soccer. It didn’t matter that Stout had the flowing mane of a browsing champion moderately than Koch’s intently shaved pate; he delivered the products the place it mattered.
But if the Ravens had been going to draft Koch’s substitute, Brown needed to be satisfied of greater than the thump in Stout’s leg. He talked with him many times, spoke to his dad and mom. He wanted to know Stout would match into the collegial however exacting tradition Tucker, Koch and lengthy snappers Cox and Nick Moore had created over 10 years collectively. The newcomer needed to be equal elements assured and open to blunt teaching. As Brown got here to the conclusion Stout was this man, he stored Koch, whom he considers one in all his closest buddies, within the loop. The incumbent punter was not shocked when the Ravens referred to as Stout’s title within the fourth spherical of the draft.
Koch solely wanted to look at just a few punts from Stout’s faculty tape to be satisfied of his successor’s ability.
“He brought a lot of the same punting abilities that I did. The way he approached a football and struck a football was very similar,” Koch mentioned. “He had a great foundation.”
Now, the previous punter had to determine how you can be a coach. Koch doesn’t like leaving something to likelihood. Whether it’s mowing the garden at his dwelling in Carroll County, taking part in cornhole within the Ravens’ locker room or delivering a retirement speech, he should put together to do the factor nicely. He wished to combine that brutal honesty he realized from Rosburg with the encouraging tone he had adopted whereas teaching his youngsters. He’s nonetheless calculating when to interject and when to present Stout room to discover a answer independently.
The pupil feels his trainer has judged this dance nicely: “I feel like it would be hard to just pick up coaching after you’ve been playing 16 years, but it’s seamless for him. … Let’s say I make a mistake, or I consistently make a mistake that he wouldn’t have made, he never once says, ‘Oh, well, if I was out there, I would be doing this.’ He’s always like, ‘Hey, Jordan, this is what you did; let’s fix it next time.’ He’s not trying to turn me into him, which is unbelievable.”
With the common season looming, all events appear satisfied they’ve discovered the perfect working association.
“I never stood on that field at Heinz Field, when the wind was just ridiculous in Pittsburgh,” Brown mentioned when requested what distinctive aspect Koch brings to teaching Stout. “Sam can communicate with him, ‘Hey, these were the number of pregame punts, this is how I feel on second down and third down.’ Jordan having that much information, there is no price tag for that.”
Stout punted brilliantly for a lot of coaching camp and the preseason, his balls hovering majestically after which dropping lifeless just a few yards from the purpose line. Any punt that doesn’t pin his opponent contained in the 10-yard line he considers lower than excellent. So the 50-yarder he hit to entice the Arizona Cardinals on their 3-yard line within the Ravens’ second preseason sport was principally his thought of an ice-cream sundae.
Holding for Tucker proved to be extra of an journey. Stout thought he’d labored onerous to excellent this extra arcane aspect of the job earlier than he arrived in Baltimore (and Brown agrees he was above the standard NFL commonplace). What does he assume now?
“I was not good at holding,” he mentioned, laughing once more. “I went back and watched film and god I was bad. I kept missing the spot.”
Tucker is usually referred to as the best kicker in league historical past, however he has mentioned repeatedly that he couldn’t have set his commonplace with out Koch putting the ball precisely as he wished it on try after try, irrespective of the sector or climate circumstances. Rosburg has referred to as Koch the best holder in NFL historical past. In different phrases, there’s actual strain on Stout to not derail this beautiful machine.
“You’re expected to be perfect every time,” he mentioned. “Receivers drop the ball, but if a holder drops the ball, the world is going to end.”
He already seems like Tucker, describing how he has to set that massive image apart and break the craft all the way down to its part elements, every repeatable in any context.
“You just do your job,” Stout mentioned, “and you know he’s going to make that kick.”
Week 1
RAVENS@JETS
Sunday, 1 p.m.
TV: Chs. 13, 9
Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM
()
Source: www.bostonherald.com