Punters in respectful battle for job
Looking for a new Steelers jersey that won’t be stale for the 2021 season and might even last you several years? You can feel safe investing in a No. 6 with Harvin on the back.
At least that’s what recent history tells us in the NFL: Any team willing to invest one of its precious draft picks in a punter isn’t going to let someone else do the job that season. You have to go back to 2010 to find a punter who was drafted and didn’t make the team, a streak of 17 in a row who stepped right in as rookies at one of the more anonymous positions on the roster.
“That doesn’t affect me,” Steelers special teams coordinator Danny Smith insisted after practice this week. “It’s the same as a quarterback, same as a DB, and anybody that doesn’t think so, doesn’t understand the game of football. In Pittsburgh, Pa., obviously we like draft choices to make football teams, as everybody does. But we don’t keep guys on a hope or a prayer or a wish. We’re going to keep the best guy.”
Of the 20 punters drafted in the decade before the Steelers selected Harvin in this year’s seventh round, only Brent Bowden, a sixth-rounder of Tampa Bay in 2010, was cut coming out of training camp. The other 19 started from Week 1, and only five lasted fewer than three seasons with the team that drafted them (three of four punters drafted since 2019 are projected to remain in those roles this season). Last year, a rookie led the NFL in punting yards in Braden Mann, a sixth-round pick of the Jets.
Harvin, the only punter drafted this year, has to beat out an established Steeler in Jordan Berry — who might have a leg up himself, given that he has been here for most of the past six seasons. With Berry, the Steelers have seen him execute in regular season games. They can only project how Harvin will handle that by working off his stellar resume at Georgia Tech and considering what he did in the Hall of Fame Game. In his first chance to really show his stuff at the NFL level, Harvin hammered four punts for an average of 45.8 yards (not to mention 45.5 net yards) and put three of those inside the 20 (not to mention one that was downed at the 1).
“I have timed everything,” Smith said of assessing the two so far. “I’ve got stacks up there [in the office] of times that would blow your mind. And I’m not a big stat guy, but I’ve got times of hand-to-foot, hang time, dip, distance, location, all those kinds of things.”
After Harvin took all the punts in the first exhibition, Berry got his opportunity to answer Thursday night in Philadelphia and held his own. His four attempts averaged 44 yards (42.3 net) with two inside the 20 — downed at the 2 and the 7.
But Berry will need more of that in the last two preseason games. Of the 19 immediate starting punters since 2010, seven of them displaced veterans with at least six years of NFL experience. Some of those teams staged training camp battles, others cut or traded their incumbents shortly after the draft, but all eventually turned to a newcomer on special teams. That’s what Berry is trying to prevent, one year after he was replaced by an even older option in Dustin Colquitt (who was cut five weeks into last season in order to bring back Berry).
“It’s good to see two pros put their best foot forward — no pun intended,” Smith said. “Jordan’s punting the ball better than he ever has, and the young kid is very talented. So it’s been quite a competition, and it will continue.”
The two combatants don’t seem to mind, either. On Saturday, Harvin called Berry “a good guy” who has been “a big help” in practice each day. Berry, a 30-year-old Australian who has held off his share of candidates in camp over the years, acknowledged that the two are similar punters, so the decision will come down to consistency.
“He’s a good bloke,” Berry said. “He pays attention pretty well and is trying to pick up as much as he can. … You hear some teams where other specialists will come in and — I’ll be blunt, some guys are just absolute [jerks] to other people. There’s no point in being like that to someone. He’s here trying to get a job, and there’s no point in being mean. I’ll help him out where I can.”
It’s unclear if Harvin and Berry will alternate over the final two exhibitions, or if they’ll each get a game to themselves again, but this profiles as a competition that’s as tight as any in camp. The numbers league-wide tell us it’s Harvin’s spot to lose — especially with him having no trouble as a holder, too — but the fact that Berry’s still here means it’s a legitimate evaluation process for the coaches.
Maybe they could even take advantage of the situation the way they did in 2015, when they got a seventhround draft pick from the Giants in exchange for punter Brad Wing.