Jim Mashek

HALL OF FAME PUNTER WAS A TRAILBLAZER HIS ENTIRE CAREER

The Oakland Raiders took a lot of grief in 1973, when they used a first-round draft pick on a punter from Southern Miss named Ray Guy.

The Raiders had done their homework, however, and knew they were getting a lot more than that.

They were getting a perfectionist, a master at his craft. They were getting a game changer. They were getting the man who popularized the phrase “hang time” when evaluating a punt and how it affected the course of a football game.

Guy died Thursday, at the age of 73. He’d battled a multitude of health issues, some personal setbacks, later in life, but he was not one to feel sorry for himself. He was stoic. He was fearless. And he served as an inspiration for specialists both during and after his amazing career.

In 2014, after coming up short seemingly countless times, Guy was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. He was the second kicking specialist, and the first punter, to be selected. His candidacy became a hot-button issue over the years, with some of his critics pointing out that his stats weren’t all that impressive, compared to more contemporary NFL punters of the last couple decades.

What bunk.

The eye test, that’s what counts.

If you watched him play, you understood. Especially in person. TV only showed you so much.

On the green grass of the fabled Los Angeles Coliseum, in the twilight of Guy’s career, I was able to watch him work.

I was in my first year of covering the New Orleans Saints for the morning newspaper in Baton Rouge. (Yes, in those days, they had TWO dailies in Louisiana’s capital. Now they share ONE with New Orleans, and the less said about that, probably the better.)

Guy was long and lean. Limber. He could contort his body in ways seldom seen beyond a gymnastics meet, and his powerful right leg could send footballs into the sky, taking their time in coming back to earth and allowing his teammates to get downfield to make the tackle.

Dude knew how to flip the field.

That’s a concept that came in vogue during Ray Guy’s time, too, and it was one of the Raiders’ secret weapons, whether they were in Oakland or Los Angeles. He retired in 1987, after 13 NFL seasons, and he was a man who defined his position.

The Raiders wouldn’t have been the Raiders, without Ray Guy.

Oh, he was an unbelievable athlete. Threw a couple no-hitters while pitching for Southern Miss. Was a strikeout machine, on the pitchers’ mound.

Was good enough, classmates said, that he could have played Division I basketball with the Golden Eagles, too. Unloaded a punt from his own end zone that covered 93 yards against the Ole Miss Rebels. Kicked a 61-yard field goal in a snowstorm at Utah State.

He was a hard-hitting defensive back for Southern Miss, too, and was always on John Madden’s case about getting a shot at playing in the secondary for the Raiders. He was the team’s emergency quarterback throughout his NFL career.

If there’s one play that shows what Guy meant to the Raiders, however, I think it was a sequence when he entered the game to punt against the team then known as the Washington Redskins in 1984. In the Super Bowl, in Tampa.

It was in the game’s early moments, after Washington’s defense was able to get off the field. The snap from center was terrible. It sailed high and to Guy’s right, and in one move, the 6-foot-3, 190-pound punter leaped high off the ground, his right arm extending toward the skies.

He snared that ball out of the air, like a power forward grabbing a rebound with a single hand, and punted the hell out of it, as he usually did.

The Raiders avoided an early disaster and went on to bury the defending Super Bowl champions, claiming a 38-9 victory.

Guy would win three Super Bowls in his distinguished career in pro football. The Raiders haven’t won another one since.

College football’s top punter is named the winner of the Ray Guy Award every December.

Southern Miss brought him in to work in a fundraising and public relations capacity later in life, and after I made it to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, in 1994, I’d get a chance to talk to him from time to time. When he’d get nominated for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which became pretty frequent after a while, he’d give me everything I needed for a story, or a column, along with instructions on how to reach him if he actually got the call from Canton.

Unfortunately, that call didn’t come until a couple years after I left Mississippi for Texas.

Ray Guy defined his position. He punted the hell out of the ball. In 13 years of punting for the Raiders, he had a grand total of three blocked punts.

Three.

Guy grew up in Thomsen, Georgia, and Southern Miss was able to lure him away from the likes of Georgia’s Vince Dooley, who died just a few days earlier at the age of 90. He was a star defensive back as well as a punter and placekicker at Southern Miss. He was a terrific goodwill ambassador for the university, which has had its share of financial challenges over the years.

I remember watching his induction speech, from Canton, just eight years ago.

I remember his humility, his gratitude.

I remember what made him the Greatest Punter That Ever Lived.

Godspeed, Ray. You will be missed.