Punts offer a preferred option on fourth down for football teams that don't want to give up the ball on downs in a risky part of the field, particularly their own half. While football fans may not be consciously aware of how angles affect the punt, the punters themselves need to implicitly calculate the optimum vectors for their kicks. A legendary punter such as the Oakland Raiders' Ray Guy, who developed his form punting over the power lines behind his boyhood home in Georgia, figured out the preferred gradient to achieve an impressive hang time of five seconds. Understanding punt angles can help you as team punter or armchair aficionado of this specialized position.
Physics Involved
The punter, who kicks a football dropped from his hands -- unlike a place kicker, who kicks the ball from a tee or a hold by a teammate -- wants to find an angle that gets the ball as far downfield as possible, notes Villanova physics professor Angelo Armenti in "The Physics of Sports." At the same time, he wants to keep the ball in the air as long as possible, so that teammates can cover the kick by getting downfield and defending against the punt returner. Somewhere between these two goals is a "sweet spot" of the perfect angle for the punt.
The Kicker's Dilemma
Armenti presents calculations showing that the maximum horizontal range of the punt is achieved by kicking it at a 45-degree angle, but such a kick has a hang time -- football terminology for time spent in the air -- almost 30 percent less than the theoretical maximum for a given launching speed. Meanwhile, the maximum theoretical hang time occurs with a kick straight up at 90 degrees, but such an angle would be nonsensical given the goal of sending the football down the field. The kicker's dilemma becomes choosing a launching angle somewhere between 45 and 90 degrees, figuring out how much distance to sacrifice for hang time, and vice versa.
Typical Launching Angle
After analyzing 238 punts by NFL kickers, Armenti found an average launch speed of 60 to 70 mph, an average hang time of about 4.1 seconds and a typical launching angle from 55 to 60 degrees. Punters may drop below 50 degrees to gain more distance or go as high as 70 degrees to increase hang time, he writes. By launching a punt at a 55-degree angle instead of 45 degrees, the punter loses about five yards of distance and gains more than half a second of hang time. A separate study by physicist Ryan D. Hartschuh at the College of Wooster in Ohio of film taken of the college's kickers found an average angle closer to 51 degrees.
Adjusting to Conditions
In his book "Football Kicking and Punting," Guy recommends adjusting the angle of the punt to weather conditions, especially wind. Punting into the wind, you need to kick at a lower trajectory to avoid having the wind resist the ball and minimize the distance covered. With the wind at your back, a pooch punt -- as high as possible down the middle of the field -- keeps you from booming the ball into the end zone. With a crosswind slightly at your back, kick with the angle of the wind to direct the ball to a corner just in front of the end zone, Guy advises.
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