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“These guys are obtaining more powerful and greater, just like any other soccer participant,” explained Jeff Feagles, who punted for five franchises from 1988 to 2009 and holds the N.F.L. history for cumulative yardage. “There’s camps that these men are likely to now, starting their freshman calendar year of superior faculty. Back in the working day there was no instruction, you just discovered how to do it. The other detail is the Australian invasion they have this repertoire of kicks we hardly ever had.”
Dickson — a 6-foot-2 Australian who weighs 208 kilos, with the biceps of a strong protection — is at the entrance of each developments. In the off-season, soon after an All-Pro rookie yr in 2018 and an even much better statistical marketing campaign in 2020, he signed a 4-year, $14.5 million contract extension ($8.5 million certain), the 2nd-most useful punter’s agreement in the N.F.L.
The offer was a end result of Dickson’s development into a kind of kicking scientist. As a 19-12 months-aged, he attended Prokick Australia, an academy in Melbourne that considering the fact that 2009 has turned some Australian rules football gamers into top-edge punters. (Seattle’s Week 4 opponent, the San Francisco 49ers, employed a further Prokick alumnus, Mitch Wishnowsky, who potential customers the N.F.L. in pin-deep proportion.)
Below the assistance of Nathan Chapman, a previous Australian Soccer League punter and Prokick’s founder, Dickson refined the squibs and spinners utilised for ball manage in Australia and picked up the substantial spiral approach favored by American punters in the hopes of receiving a scholarship to a higher education in the United States.
Dickson punted for as extended as the Australian daylight permitted. (“If you are not watching him, he’ll punt a thousand balls in apply,” stated Larry Izzo, the Seahawks’ special groups mentor.) One particular early morning, Chapman viewed from afar even though the teen worked to raise his dangle time — the interval a punt spends in the air, permitting the protection crew to operate downfield. “He absolutely slaughtered the ball,” Chapman claimed. “Five seconds is the N.F.L. stage he was up all over that 5 seconds just before he even went to higher education.”
Soon after his junior year at the College of Texas, when Dickson received the Ray Dude Award as the prime collegiate punter, Seattle picked him in the fifth round of the 2018 draft. In his rookie season, he concluded next in the N.F.L. in common punt length. Final calendar year, he retained that standing when pinning groups inside of the 20 with 51 % of his kicks, the 3rd-very best mark in the league.
The modest sample measurement of kicks implies that this sort of rankings can fluctuate commonly inside a season. Following an uncharacteristic run of four touchbacks in 4 video games, Dickson’s web yardage has dropped to a middling 39.9 in 2021. But he pinned the 49ers inside their own 20 a few moments on Sunday, vaulting up the Puntalytics Punter Anticipated Factors Added leaderboard.
