Las Vegas Raiders Coach Jon Gruden Got a Kick Out of AJ Cole
Punter AJ Cole of the Las Vegas Raiders feels bad for the 2020 crop of NFL free agent rookies because they won’t get the opportunity he had last year.
The undrafted free agent from North Carolina State so impressed Coach Jon Gruden in a rookie mini-camp last year that he was signed by the Raiders and eventually beat out starting punter Johnny Townsend, who was waived before the season started.
There are no mini-camps this year because of precautions due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s really unfortunate,” Cole told The Athletic recently. “There is a really good chance that if I don’t have rookie mini-camp last year that I never walk into an NFL facility. Nobody wanted to give me a contract and I had a job at IBM that I was set to start in August.
“I hate it for the guys that are going to be missing out, and I hope that they continue to train and that there’s an opportunity at some point for them to prove themselves.”
Cole got a call from the Raiders, who were then located in Oakland, after he went undrafted and was asked if he wanted to show his stuff at a three-day, free-agent mini-camp at their practice facility in Alameda, Calif.
The 6-4, 220-pounder from College Park, Ga., couldn’t say yes fast enough, but when he got there it made his head spin.
“It was a beast, a 72-hour football bender,” Cole recalled. “People are really in different categories, the guys that get drafted are in a different program than the guys who are still trying to get a contract. And it goes so fast. By the time you learn everybody’s name, it’s over.”
Cole arrived in Alameda on Thursday night and was duly impressed when he checked out the pictures of Raiders greats on the wall at the practice facility and the nameplates in the locker room, before taking part in some meetings.
After doing some punting on Friday, the Raiders gave him a day off from kicking on Saturday because they didn’t want to overwork him, but that’s the day Cole probably remembers most.
“On Saturday I am just catching balls from the long-snapper and Gruden, who I had had no interaction with, just walks right up to me,” Cole remembers. “He looks at me and says, ‘Hey … can you do the job?’
“I was caught off guard and I turned around and I was like, ‘Wait, what did you say?’
And he was like, ‘I said, can you do the job?’ And I looked at him and said, ‘Hell yeah.’
He said, ‘All right, we’re going to find out tomorrow. We’re going to put you in a punt set and we’re going to have everybody screaming at you and banging their helmets. And if you punt well, maybe you become a Raider.’
“ … So, I had 24 hours to mull that one over.”
Gruden apparently hadn’t seen Cole punt on Friday because he was busy on another field, but his assistant coaches told him the kid was impressive.
On Sunday, the Raiders' head coach was right there.
“There were 10 punts,” Cole remembers. “ … Coach Gruden made this announcement first: ‘We got this rookie punter! From N.C. State! And he is coming in here and saying he wants to be a Raider! Well, we’re going to see what he can do.’”
That’s not all.
Gruden had all the other players make noise and even had one of his assistant coaches wave his hand in Cole’s face on some of the punts.
“He wanted to see if I was going to perform in a pressure situation or if was I going to fold,” Cole says now. “Yeah, I hit … all (10 punts) pretty well. The reaction after each one got louder and louder.”
Raiders General Manager Mike Mayock recalled the impressive performance on SiriusXM NFL Radio: “This kid was killing the ball and Gruden couldn’t believe it, so … he brought the entire team up and he stood next to (Cole). And he had everybody screaming and yelling, and Jon was dropping his clipboard next to him as he caught the ball. He was doing everything he could. …
“And this is this kid’s whole life in these few punts, he ended up killing the ball.”
Cole earned the job in training camp and during the season punted 67 times for 3,081 yards, a 46.0-yard average, and put 33 of his kicks inside the 20-yard-line.
At one point during the season, Gruden said: “We haven’t seen kicks like that since (Shane) Lechler was here, or (Marquette) King.”
You don’t have to be a member of Raider Nation to know those names.
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