Raiders Punter Cole Might Be Just Another Guy

A.J. Cole of the Las Vegas Raiders is just the latest in a long line of outstanding punters in franchise history, led by the incomparable Ray Guy, the greatest of all time.

The 6-4, 220-pound Cole was signed by the Raiders as an undrafted free agent out of North Carolina State in 2019 and has proved to be a pleasant surprise, being selected first-team All-Pro and to his first Pro Bowl this season.

Cole averaged 46.0 yards per punt as a rookie, 44.1 last year, and 50.0 this season to lead the NFL and has yet to have a punt blocked in 175 kicks in his professional career.

“The results haven’t always been as kind to Cole as his kicks have deserved, but no punter has a better combination of distance, hang time and direction this season,” Pro Football Focus noted in selecting Cole to their 2021 All-Pro Team. “His average hang time is an impressive 4.4 seconds.”

Only Hall of Fame quarterback and punter Sammy Baugh averaged more yards per punt in a season, 51.4 yards, than Cole.

However, in Raiders lore and NFL history, the G.O.A.T. is recognized as Guy, who punted for the Raiders from 1973-86, including victories in Super Bowls XI, XV, and XVIII, and is the only pure punter who has been enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

The 6-3, 195-pound Guy, selected in the first round (23rd overall) of the 1973 NFL Draft by the Raiders out of Southern Mississippi, was an outstanding athlete who could have played defensive back in the NFL and was considered the Raiders’ emergency quarterback.

However, he was so valuable in his punting role that he never got a chance to do either, while playing in 207 consecutive games, punting 1,049 times for 44,493 yards, averaging 42.4 yards per punt, having 210 punts that went inside the 20-yard line (not counting his first three seasons, when the NFL did not keep that statistic), with only 128 touchbacks.

Not many of Guy’s punts were returned because his kicks had such incredible hang time.

Guy led the NFL in yards per punt three times, had a streak of 619 consecutive punts before having one blocked, had a record of 111 punts in post-season games, and had had five punts of more than 60 yards during the 1981 season.

“Having Ray Guy meant having a chance to make the playoffs and win the Super Bowl,” Raiders Hall of Fame cornerback Willie Brown said. “He was just that strong because his ability to punt when we needed a long punt, he did it; when we needed a short punt, he did all that. He kept opposing offensive teams back in the hole a majority of the time.”

Guy was selected to the All-Pro team eight times, played in eight Pro Bowls, won the Golden Toe Award in 1975, and was selected to the NFL 1970s All-Decade Team, the NFL 75th Anniversary Team, and the NFL 100th Anniversary All-Time Team.

In his pro career, Guy had only three punts blocked, and his longest punts went for 77, 72, and 71 yards.

Pro Football Hall of Fame historian Joe Horrigan said of Guy: “He’s the first punter you could look at and say he won games.”

Although Guy was also the Raiders’ emergency quarterback and completed two of three passes for 54 yards on fake punts, he never saw the field on offense because of the chance he might be injured.

Coach John Madden said. “I just didn’t let him play. He was too valuable as a punter. He threw harder than (Kenny) Stabler.”

During the 1976 Pro Bowl at the Louisiana Superdome, one of Guy’s punts hit the gondola and video screen 90 feet above the field.

The second-best punter in Raiders history was Shane Lechler, who was selected by the Silver and Black with the fifth round (No. 142 overall), out of Texas A&M in the 2000 NFL Draft.

The 6-2, 240-pound Lechler was named first-team All-Pro six times, made seven Pro Bowls, led the NFL in punting average five times, and is the NFL’s all-time leader in career punting average at 47.6 yards.

Lechler had at least one punt of 50 yards or more in 33 consecutive games from Week 13 of 2003 through Week 14 of 2005, the longest streak by any player since the AFL/NFL merger in 1970. Lechler’s 51.1-yard average per punt in 2009 is second only to Baugh’s mark of 51.4 in 1940.

In addition, Lechler was selected to the NFL 2000s All-Decade Team, the NFL 2010s All-Decade Team, and the NFL 100th Anniversary Team and deserves to be on the Hall of Fame.

The Raiders signed punter Marquette King to a free agent contract after he went undrafted in the 2012 NFL Draft out of Fort Valley State in his native Georgia, but he spent his rookie season on injured reserve.

When Lechler left the Silver and Black a year later to sign with the Houston Texans, the 6-1, 190-pound King stepped in and stepped up to lead the NFL with a punting average of 48.9 yards in 2013 and one of his kicks went for 66 yards. He was even better the next season, leading the NFL with 4,930 total yards punting for a league-leading 48.9 average, both Raiders single-season records.

In his six seasons with the Raiders, King punted 426 times for 19,941 yards, a team-record 46.8-yard average with a long kick of 72 yards, in addition to pinning opponents inside the 20-yard-line on 156 occasions while having only three punts blocked. The fourth-leading punter in franchise history, he was selected second-team All-Pro in 2016.

The Raiders were the sixth team Jeff Gossett punted for in his NFL career when he joined them in 1988 at the age of 31, and in eight seasons he went on to become the third-leading punter in franchise history with 26,474 yards on 642 punts, a 41.7-yard average, with a long of 65 yards.

Gossett pinned opponents inside the 20-yard-line on 180 of those kicks and had only three punts blocked. He averaged a career-high 44.2 yards per punt in 1991, when he was selected first-team All-Pro, played in the Pro Bowl, and received the Golden Toe Award from Pro Football Weekly, and he eventually retired in 1996 at the age of 39.

The Raiders also had Johnny Townsend, who averaged 43.2 per punt in 2018-19, Mike Eischeid, who averaged 42.3 yards from 1966-71, Leo Araguz, who averaged 42.9 from 1996-99, Billy Joe Herbert, who averaged 41.9 from 1993-96, and Wayne Crow, who averaged 40.1 in 1960-61, the first two seasons of the American Football League.

Cole recently signed a new contract with the Raiders and the way he is going he will eventually rank near the top of the best of them.

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