[NU Sports] Smacking around punters

[Jonathan Hodges]

I watched those punts again, I think they were borderline running into the
kicker (5 yard penalty) calls, but apparently weren't called for one or both
of the following reasons:

- incidental contact
- kicker had reasonable time to regain his balance

I would guess that Fitz saw the fact that it was too close and discussed it
with the offending players in film review.  Typically players going for the
block are taught to move to one side of the kicker and not right at him,
since there is the risk of a roughing penalty that results in an automatic
first down.

Jonathan

On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 7:55 PM, Tom Maycock <tkmaycock at yahoo.com> wrote:

> >
> > I wasn't aware of the rule change, but it didn't apply
> > here.  The punter stepped straight forward to kick the
> > ball.
>
> Yep. I saw at least 2 cases where we might have been called for running
> into the kicker, but in both cases the ref was watching and didn't make the
> call. The contact was minimal in both cases, and no call seemed like the
> right call to me although I held my breath a bit both times.
>
> Good, strong game by the Cats. A few mistakes, but they looked
> well-prepared overall. Kafka was everything I hoped he would be in terms of
> accuracy and decision-making, and aside from one mistake, Persa looked
> strong as well.
>
> Receiving corps looked especially good, making pretty much all the catches.
>
> And Arby Fields showed why he's worked his way up to the #2 spot.
>
> Defense was certainly solid, although it's hard to evaluate them given the
> opponent (same could be said of the offense of course).
>
> Tom
>
>
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