Raiders Punter A.J. Cole Talks His Journey to the NFL

Over the last few seasons, the Las Vegas Raiders have had a number of players put themselves on the map as some of the NFL's best at their respective positions.

One of those names that might not pop up as often is that of Las Vegas punter A.J. Cole.

Cole's dominant 2021 season placed him in the discussion as one of the league's best special-teams performers after he led the league in yards per punt (50.0).

Such an accomplishment was one of the reasons the punter would be selected to his first Pro Bowl and named as a 2021 first-team All-Pro honoree.

Cole has risen to the top in only three seasons in the NFL, but it wasn't long ago that the young punter was trying out at a mini-camp for an opportunity to accomplish his dream of making it to the league.

It was a dream he said he had not "felt was attainable" when he discussed his draft story with Raiders.com.

"I didn't really get recruited to play college football until late in high school," Cole said. "It really was something that I wouldn't say I put all my eggs in that basket, I took college pretty seriously, majored in engineering and really just planned on playing football for four years and then going and getting a job, and just kind of ended up putting myself in a position where I had an opportunity."

Cole was a four-year starting punter at North Carolina State.

"I would say it was sometime during my junior year, like maybe summer going into junior year, I kicked with a couple of people that were getting NFL interest and were some of the better punters in college football, and I felt like I stacked up pretty decently with them," Cole said. "And moving forward from there, I sort of felt like it became attainable at some point, and then, going through my senior year, I was kicking with anybody I could get really around to compete and to stack myself up, see what I needed to improve on.

"Sometime around then, I really kind of had a realization that if things kind of broke the right way for me, I could do it."

Cole would go undrafted in 2019 but felt a sense of security, as he had a position waiting for him at IBM.

"But then I got the call from the Raiders to come into rookie minicamp, and I was like, 'All right, three-day tryout, one opportunity to make it shake,'" Cole said. "So I went from being disappointed to being really optimistic and just saying, 'This might be the last time I ever play football,' so I was just going to go out there and have as much fun, soak it all in, enjoy it as much as possible."

The rest would be history.

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