Raiders special teams: AJ Cole continuing tradition of high-quality punters

Current boomer is following in footsteps of Silver & Black greats Shane Lechler and Ray Guy

Whether they intended it to happen or not, the Raiders boast two of the all-time great punters the league has seen.

The Silver & Black, after all, is the only team in the NFL that has a punter in the Pro Football Hall of Fame — Ray Guy. And there’s likely another Raiders punting joining the legendary Guy in Shane Lechler at some point.

Both started their respective accomplished careers with the Oakland variant of the Raiders.

The Sin City variant of the Silver & Black have a quality punter in AJ Cole III, carrying on the tradition of a quality boot specialist. The Las Vegas Raiders current punter led the league in average per punt heading into Week 10 action with a robust 53.4 number and is in the upper echelon of statistical categories nine games into his sixth season.

That all said, let’s compare the trio of Guy, Lechler, and Cole in terms of the first six seasons of their respective careers:

• Ray Guy (1973-78): 86 games, 418 punts 18,209 yards, 43.1 yards per punt, long of 74, 43 touchbacks, 47 punts downed inside opponent’s 20, two blocked punts
• Shane Lechler (2001-05): 94 games, 442 punts, 20,266 yards, 45.9 yards per punt, long of 73, 70 touchbacks, 140 punts inside the opponent’s 20, two blocked punts
• AJ Cole III: (2019-24): 92 games, 345 punts, 16,810 yards, 48.7 yards per punt, long of 83, 27 touchbacks, 156 punts inside the opponent’s 20, one blocked punt

The joke, of course, with that trio: Boy, the Raiders punters get a lot of opportunities to build immaculate resumes, don’t they?

Career Insights

Guy, the No. 23 overall pick in the 1973 NFL Draft out of Southern Mississippi has long been the standard bearer for the coffin corner punt. While he could boom with the best of them, his pinpoint boots put opponents in poor field position as he was a field-flipping specialist that pinned the opposition inside their own 20-yard line. The 6-foot-3, 195-pounder’s 14-year career (all with the Raiders) totaled 210 punts downed inside the 20 and 77 of them arrived in the final three seasons of his storied career. His single-season high for punts inside the 20 was 32 in 1985. Guy led the league in punting in three seasons (1974, 1975, and 1977) and he made seven Pro Bowls, was name First Team All-Pro three times, and an NFL 100 All Time Team member, all enroute to a Hall of Fame spot. Overall, Guy finished with 1,049 career regular season punts for 44,493 yards (42.4 average) with 128 touchbacks. He added 111 punts for 4,705 yards (42.4 average), a long of 71 yards, in 22 career playoff games. Those are all-time career records, by the way.

Lechler, the 142nd pick from the 2000 NFL Draft out of Texas A&M, was power personified. The big-legged boomer not only sent his...