Originally posted by Texas Southern Fan
When I say mass protect, I mean, there were no player split out wide.
Well, usually there are gunners split out to each side of the formation. But for some reason, they took the gunner that would have been lined up on the right side and moved him on the inside of the gunner on the left, sorta like a slot receiver would be lined up. There was no one lined up on the wide side (right side) of the field.
Southern uses two returners to field punts just like most teams do on kick returns (I guess they started doing this when they lost that lil' fast bastid #16.) Williams was on the right and I can't remember who was on the left. I'm assuming that the play call was for the punt to be kicked to the left in hopes of pinning Southern inside their own 10 yard line. That's where the problem started.
The punter shanked his kick. Instead of it going left it went right and in the process only went 20 yards. All but two players on the TSU punt team went straight down field expecting the kick to go left. The two players lined up on the far right side of the TSU "o-line" went to the right side of the field, which I assume was their assignment. When Lenny caught the ball (the ball was shanked straight to him) there was nothing but green in front of him with the exception of those two players. With only those two players and then the punter in front of him, he made one move, got one block and was on his way after getting past the punter. The field was so wide open that I thought I was looking at six-man football highlights on Texas Sports Extra.
There was no one within 15 yards of him because the rest of the TSU punt team didnt know what was going on (Actually there was one guy that noticed. He was their last hope to tackle Lenny but ended up getting knocked the **** out on a crushing block. That was a helluva lick.)
Now most people are probably blaming the punter but I think the coach is to blame for two reasons:
1. Southern uses two punt returners. Even if he would have punted the ball in the middle of the field, SU could have had their punt return set up to the left and broke it since there was no gunner there.
2. The punter, two minutes before that, had just shanked a punt to the right side. I would have been saying to myself, "this mofo might just kick that ball the same way he did before."