Dawgs By Nature
25 questions with a former Cleveland specialist
Specialists in American Football are a different breed. They can do things that most other players cannot like kick a football over a pine tree or throw a spiral pass 45 feet while looking backward and upside down. Or launch a football off a tee 70 yards.
In high school, punters, kickers, and long snappers play other positions such as quarterback, safety, or offensive line. At that level, most athletes who kick or punt it is just something else you do as an athlete. They have learned their craft by themselves or were taught something by the guy who did that particular job the year before or used Dr. Google.
By the time a specialist gets to the college level, more attention is given to these players so that they can achieve and provide that extra boost in a game. A long punt that rolls inside the 10-yard line or a 50+ field goal after a stalled drive can be game-changers. Coaching is now involved rather than someone’s dad shagging footballs.
Despite how critical each specialist is in live games, few hear their names called on the weekend of the NFL draft. There are a few exceptions such as punter Ray Guy being a first-round pick of the Oakland Raiders in the 1973 draft. He went on to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, named to several All-Decades Teams, selected to the NFL 100th Anniversary All-Time Team, was a three-time Super Bowl champion, and has an honor named after him: the Ray Guy Award presented annually to college football’s most outstanding punter.
The punter is a crucial aspect of every game. When a team decides that it cannot make a first down in three downs, they rely on their punter to bail them out and boot the ball away. This strategy is part of what is called “field possession” and if a club has a reliable punter, the field possession game will keep an opponent pinned down as a starting point deep in their end of the gridiron.
Spencer Lanning came to the Cleveland Browns in 2012 and was their punter from 2013 to 2014. He was signed away from the Sacramento Mountain Lions of the original United Football League (UFL) where in his lone season he punted 18 times for 725 yards with a 40.3 yards per punt average and a long of 54 yards.
He became the starter for Cleveland replacing punter Reggie Hodges. That year Lanning had 84 punts for 3,679 yards with a 43.8 yards per kick average.
In 2014 Lanning had a career-high 93 punts for 4,119 yards and a 44.3 yards per kick average. In the off-season, Cleveland traded for punter Andy Lee of the San Francisco 49ers. Lee already had earned three Pro Bowls while with the 49ers, but oddly enough that season was only ranked 15th in the NFL.
The Browns had traded away picks and moved away from the 17th-ranked punter...
