The physics of Ryan Wright's incredible 73-yard punt
When the Minnesota Vikings went three-and-out to start last Sunday’s game against the Miami Dolphins, they were staring down a potential disadvantage in field position. After failing to convert on third-and-9 from their own 7-yard line, it appeared the Dolphins were going to get the ball on the Vikings’ side of the field, which would have given them a chance to go ahead early in the game at Hard Rock Stadium. Lending a helping hand to the Dolphins’ third-string quarterback was not exactly the way they drew it up.
Instead Vikings punter Ryan Wright unleashed a monster 73-yard punt that traveled nearly 80 yards in the air. Returner Tyreek Hill ran full speed backward, only to see the punt still sail over his head. He caught it, attempted to dodge several tacklers and ended up losing two yards. Miami started the next drive at their own 18-yard line. That is what you call flipping the field. The Dolphins gained 40 yards of offense on that drive and still ended up having to punt the ball back to the Vikings.
Wright has been a legitimate weapon for the Vikings, who rank at the top of the league in opponents’ average drive start. More than 50% of his punts have pinned the opposition inside the 20 yard line and the Vikings are fifth in the NFL in average return yards allowed. They have also improved nearly two yards in net punting average (despite one 15-yard punt faux pas).
Even if we expected this improvement in the Vikings’ punting when they chose the rookie Wright over veteran Jordan Berry, we wouldn’t have predicted the Tulane product would be capable of booting the ball nearly the entire length of the field. Usually punts of that distance are greatly aided by bounces, like Randall Cunningham’s famous 91-yard kick that landed at the 35 and rolled inside the New York Giants’ 10-yard line. To send the ball 80 yards in the air — that’s different.
So how in the world was it possible? If Wright is capable of sending the ball flying that far, why doesn’t he do it all the time?
One man who would know better about the physics of a 73-yard punt than anyone else on earth is Dr. Tim Gay, a physics professor at the University of Nebraska who wrote the book Football Physics: The Science of the Game. Dr. Gay has spent a lifetime fascinated with how things in football work. Coincidentally he was the varsity team manager for Bill Belichick’s high school team. Belichick wrote the foreword to his book, by the way.
In breaking down his unfathomable punt, we have to start with the size of the man. Wright is listed at 6-foot-3, 245 pounds, making him the second heaviest punter in the NFL only behind Pittsburgh’s Pressley Harvin III, who is 6-foot, 255 pounds.
“There are two things that matter: The mass of the guy’s leg — so a bigger player has an advantage there — but it’s also the foot speed,” Gay said. “The mass helps you. But the bigger mass of a big guy over that of a small guy’s leg helps you only if you can get that foot speed up to the same value…it’s a complex intertwining of foot speed and leg mass.”
Being large and having great foot speed is only meaningful if the contact with the football is exactly right. And I mean exactly. Gay’s investigation of kicking revealed that there is a sweet spot on the football in the same way that a baseball hitter finds the perfect contact point between the bat and the baseball. On a football, that point is 5.5 centimeters below the center of the ball. Gay points out that the reason kickers changed to soccer style kicking with the side of their foot is to increase the surface area and better their odds of hitting the sweet spot.
“I think if you miss it by half a centimeter you’re probably OK but if you miss it by two centimeters you’re probably not OK,” Gay said.
Before we move on, do this little experiment: Hold up your thumb. That’s about two centimeters. That’s the margin for error that NFL punters have.
It’s a pretty safe assumption that Wright hit the sweet spot. How much power does it take to send a football 80 yards in the air? Because of its unusual distance, this punt is more comparable to a kickoff. Gay’s research found that the foot and ball are only connected on impact for about eight milliseconds and that the average pressure applied to the ball over that span is about 450 pounds. However, at the exact moment the foot connects, that number is much higher.
“At the point of first contact the instantaneous force the foot applies shoots up several times its average perhaps reaching as much as a ton for an instant,” Gay said. “It’s very intimidating to get close to those guys when they’re punting. It’s like a firecracker going off.”
Dr. Tim Gay, a University of Nebraska physics professor, wrote the book on the physics of football
Knowing the energy delivered to the ball, Gay can figure out how fast the football is exiting Wright’s foot. A normal punt is around 75 miles per hour. One that travels as far as Wright’s did puts it in the range of a kickoff, which goes 90 miles per hour. So give or take a few mph, the football was traveling at nearly the speed of an Major League Baseball fastball.
Now here’s where things get really interesting: The ball’s flight.
One subject that has captivated Dr. Gay over his many years of watching football is the way in which the football travels through the air on its axis. If you’ve never thought about that before, join the club. But there’s something really interesting happening.
See, when a quarterback throws a deep pass, the nose of the football starts pointed up in the air and then turns downward when it reaches its peak and then drops into the receiver’s hands. Punts, on the other hand, do not always do that. Sometimes they continue spinning with the nose upward as they fall to earth. But sometimes the ball does travel exactly like a quarterback threw it and the nose turns down upon its dissention.
“You’d expect a ball that turns over (nose down) to go farther in general because it has less air drag on it,” Gay said.
He estimates that elite punters can get the ball to spiral — with either the nose up or nose down — about 75 percent of the time.
“What I’d really like to understand why the good punters can usually get it to spiral whereas mediocre punters generally it just tumbles,” Gay said. “The reason you want it to spiral is because you want it to go farther.”
Long story short: Wright’s punt likely had the look of a classic NFL Films-style Ken Stabler throw.
Because of the air drag on the ball, Gay calls its flight a “modified parabola,” or in other words, it wouldn’t have gone in the precise curve that it would have traveled in a vacuum. The spiral cuts down the effect of the air drag, unlike an end-over-end kickoff that can actually be lifted higher by colliding with the air.
The unfortunate part of the available film on the punt is that we are unable to see exactly how high the ball went, which would have provided more information about its trajectory. However, using this projective motion calculator we can guess that the ball peaked around 50 yards up in the air — or about half the distance of the field up in the air.
There’s one other important point that Gay makes about the Wright punt: The human element. While great players are all battling the laws of physics and the players who best do battle with those laws are the ones who rise above the rest, there’s still a missing piece between leg size and foot placement.
“The most talented kicker will be the one who can get his leg moving the fastest in a kinesiological way, but it’s talent, it’s heart, it’s the desire to win, there’s a great human component to it,” Gay said.
Wright does seem to have a bit of a clutch gene. After Jordan Berry was cut, Wright’s first night as the full-time punter was a preseason game in which he crushed a 68-yarder and averaged 56 yards per punt on the night.
For Tim Gay, it was a treat to watch.
“It was a lot of fun. It was impressive. Wow. That’s a heck of a punt,” he said. “I’d love to have a good side view so you could measure the speed and altitude and really characterize the trajectory. It’s a very complicated problem.”
