NFL - Week 2

Football is fundamentally a team sport, where coaches harness individual skills and talents into a synchronized swarm of gridiron glory. But once in a great while, there is a game that relegates the other 104 players to the periphery. Playbooks and clock management become extraneous, unnecessary even. In their place, two giants of the game rise from the frivolity and froth of ordinary Sundays to do battle over four epic quarters.

So let September 20^th no longer stand as Billie Jean King’s victory over Bobby Riggs or the debut of the gas-powered car. Rather, it is the day Shane Lechler and Dustin Colquitt went punt for punt in one of the all-time thrillers to grace the yard-ruled turf of God’s America.

This chapter in the Chiefs-Raiders, too often characterized by porous defense and substandard play, was to be written by a pair of iron boots all-too-familiar to NFL lore. As the offenses stalled for both teams, Lechler and Colquitt took over, racking up more than 600 yards with each booming kick. When Lechler would take one deep inside the 10, Colquitt would put it inside the 5. When Colquitt clocked in a hang-time of 5.1, Lechler would buy the ball 6 seconds worth of airfare.

As the spotlight burned brighter, these heroes of the high-kick fought on, past lengthy possessions and incidental touchdowns, to the final down. At the end of the day, the scoreboard read 13-10 in favor of the Raiders, but between punters, there was no clear winner. The score unsettled, Lechler and Colquitt will meet again in November, already being billed as the most anticipated punter’s duel since Feagles-Gardocki in 1995.

Until then, we hold our breath in the hang-time.

Bios:

Shane Lechler, a six-time All Pro out of East Bernard, Texas, is the veteran leader and alternate co-captain for the Oakland Raiders. Nicknamed “The Golden Boot,” he has won every possible punting award during his 10-year NFL tenure. Although the celebrity of his punting prowess has sometimes proved to be a distraction off the field – not least of which his on-again-off-again relationship with Charmed star Hollie Marie Combs – he remains the league’s most prolific puntsmith, holding the all-time records for average and distance.

Dustin “Mr. 4^th Down” Colquitt is the punting prodigy for the Kansas City Chiefs. A relative newcomer, Colquitt comes from a storied bloodline of NFL punters and self-employed dropkickers. After graduating from Tennessee in 2005, he burst onto the scene with two explosive punts during the Chiefs 27-7 victory over the New York Jets. Colquitt has already set franchise records for most punts in a season and highest punt above sea level.