Punter-kicker Bailey has the power and the touch
During Stanford’s season opener against Kansas State, two of Jake Bailey’s punts were downed at the 1- and 2-yard lines.
He has had seven of his 10 punts downed inside the 20 and four of them inside the 5. How does this happen? How does he keep a booming punt from going into the end zone?
“You have to angle the ball and hit it with backspin,” Bailey said. “You try to put it in there and hope Trent Irwin grabs it on the 1-yard line.” (Irwin downed both of those well-placed punts against K-State.)
“You obviously still have to hit it on the sweet spot of the ball,” he said. “Normally, you want it to spiral, but not on the backward punts.”
The 6-foot-2 sophomore is fifth in the Pac-12 in punting with a 45.3-yard average, and he doubles as the Cardinal’s kickoff man. In that job, the idea is to pound the ball out of the end zone, so there’s no return. Nine of his 16 kickoffs have gone for touchbacks this year.
When the No. 7 Cardinal play at No. 10 Washington Friday night, Bailey will try to find a way to keep two dangerous return men under control, Dante Pettis on punts and John Ross on kickoffs. Against Rutgers in the season opener, Pettis scored on a 68-yard punt return and Ross on a 92-yard kickoff return.
Bailey doesn’t think his leg has gotten particularly stronger, but he thinks his mental focus has made him more consistent.
“It’s getting in a mind-set where I can make good contact every time,” he said. “That’s what was missing last year.”
As a freshman, he’d get so excited that he wanted to crush the ball, according to special-teams coach Pete Alamar. “That would lead to him hooking the ball,” Alamar said. “That’s why he had six kickoffs out of bounds last year.”
The resulting penalty gives the receiving team the big advantage of taking possession at its 35.
Alamar said he had the same conversation with Bailey that a golf coach has with a player. “The biggest thing was learning you don’t have to try to kill the ball to have it go far. Be smooth and solid on contact.”
He assigned Bailey to watch, oddly enough, a baseball movie. In “For Love of the Game,” there’s a scene in which a pitcher played by Kevin Costner tunes out the crowd. He also has to forget about his aching shoulder in his effort to complete a perfect game in what’s probably the last game of his career. The pitcher calls the mental process “clearing the mechanism.”
Bailey “possesses tremendous leg speed and leg strength,” Alamar said. “He has unlimited potential. He’s becoming more and more consistent.”
A football isn’t the only thing Bailey likes to guide into the sky. He’s a quarter way through training for a pilot’s license, having flown this summer at Palo Alto Airport. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather flew before him.
“The machine wants to fly, so if you just help it get there, it will get off the ground,” Bailey said. “The scariest part was punching the throttle all the way down and having this thing go from zero to 80 in, like, three seconds’’ on the takeoff. “When you pull away from Earth, there’s no feeling like it.”