Ray Guy

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Ray Guy

Date of birth	December 22, 1949
Place of birth	Swainsboro, Georgia
Position(s)	Punter
College	Southern Mississippi
NFL Draft	1973 / Round 1/ Pick 23
Pro Bowls	7
Honors	NFL's 75th Anniversary All-Time Team NFL 1970s All-Decade Team College Football Hall of Fame Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Georgia Sports Halls of Fame
Statistics	DatabaseFootball
Team(s)
1973-1986	Oakland/ Los Angeles Raiders
College Hall-of-Fame

William Ray Guy (born December 22, 1949 in Swainsboro, Georgia,) was an American football punter with the National Football League's Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders from 1973-1986. He is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest punters in football history.

1 High school
2 College career
3 Pro Football career
4 Playing success
5 The Ray Guy Award
6 Pro Kicking Camp
7 Career statistics
8 External links

[edit] High school

Primarily a self-taught punter and placekicker, Ray Guy attended Thomson High School. In addition to his prolific kicking, Guy was a quarterback and free safety on Thomson teams that won two consecutive state championships.

[edit] College career

After a stellar collegiate career at the University of Southern Mississippi (where he led the NCAA in punting in 1972,) the Oakland Raiders, traditionally seen as the renegades of the National Football League for signing veteran players considered to be busts or troublemakers on other teams or being too small, too slow, or too old made an unprecedented decision in the 1973 draft by selecting Ray Guy with their first round (23rd overall) draft pick. To date, Guy remains the first and only punter drafted in the first round.

[edit] Pro Football career

During his 14-year professional career (all spent with the Raiders), Guy averaged 42.4 yards per punt and was adept at pinning the opposing team behind the 20-yard line. While not physically imposing at 6'-3" and 200 pounds, Ray Guy's leg strength was legendary. The phrase "hang time" is believed to have been created due to Guy's booming kicks. John Madden swears he witnessed Guy punt the ball 120 yards in practice — from one end zone out the back of the opposite end zone. On those occasions when the Raiders played in domed facilities, Guy's punts sometimes struck the roofs of the stadiums. Arguably, Guy's most famous (or infamous) punt came in a domed stadium during the 1976 NFL Pro Bowl game played at the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, when one of his punts struck the gondola containing a camera and television screens attached to the roof of the stadium.

In addition to the strength of his kicking leg, Madden also credits Ray Guy with throws of over 80 yards, exceeding those of any of the Raiders' regular quarterbacks. In fact, Guy was the Raiders' third-string quarterback for several seasons.

Guy was a key member of three Super Bowl-winning Raiders teams: (Super Bowls XI, XV, and XVIII. Arguably, his best performance was in Super Bowl XVIII against the Washington Redskins. When the Raiders offense faltered just outside the range of placekicker Chris Bahr, Guy, known for his power, showed a great deal of finesse by booting a 27-yard punt that pinned the Washington Redskins on their own 12-yard line late in the first half. On the very next play, the Raiders' Jack Squirek intercepted Washington quarterback Joe Theismann and returned it for a touchdown that gave them a 21-3 halftime lead. The Raiders would eventually win 38-9.

Ray Guy had a superb game:

7 punts for 299 total yards
244 net yards
34.8 yard net average
5 punts inside the opponents' 20-yard line

[edit] Playing success

Ray Guy retired in 1986. During his career, Guy:

Played in 207 consecutive games
Punted 1,049 times for 44,493 yards, averaging 42.4 yards per punt, with a 33.8 net yards average
Had 210 punts in the 20 (not counting his first 3 seasons, when the NFL did not keep track of this stat), with just 128 touchbacks
Led the NFL in punting three times
Had a streak of 619 consecutive punts before having one blocked
Has a record of 111 career punts in post season games
Had five punts of over 60 yards during the 1981 season

Ray Guy was selected to seven AFC Pro Bowl teams, and in 1994, he was named the punter on the National Football League's 75th Anniversary Team.

He was also an outstanding placekicker at Southern Mississippi, once kicking a then-record 61-yard field goal in a snowstorm during a game in Utah. After his senior season at Southern Miss, Guy was named Most Valuable Player of the annual College All-Star game, in which an all-star team of college seniors played the current Super Bowl champion.

Ray Guy has been inducted into both the Mississippi and Georgia Sports Halls of Fame, and many feel he is worthy of induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In 1994, he was the first pure punter to be nominated for enshrinement.

Joe Horrigan, the historian of the Pro Football Hall of Fame once said: "He's the first punter you could look at and say: 'He won games.'"

Arguably, one of Ray Guy's few peers as an NFL punter was Reggie Roby, whose career overlapped Guy's for three seasons. In addition to being prolific punters, they were both standout pitchers on their respective high school teams and were even drafted at different times by the same team: the Cincinnati Reds. In Guy's case the Reds drafted him twice. The Atlanta Braves and the Kansas City Royals also drafted Guy. Many pundits and fans believe that both Ray Guy and Reggie Roby are worthy of induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. If they are, they would be the first pure punters to be so honored.

[edit] The Ray Guy Award

In 2000, the Greater Augusta Sports Council instituted the Ray Guy Award, to be awarded to the nation's best collegiate punter. Past winners are:

2005 - Ryan Plackemeier, Wake Forest University
2004 - Daniel Sepulveda, Baylor University
2003 - B.J. Sander, Ohio State University
2002 - Mark Mariscal, University of Colorado
2001 - Travis Dorsch, Purdue University
2000 - Kevin Stemke, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The statue itself was created by an Augusta, Georgia orthopaedic surgeon named John Savage, Jr., who sculpted a representation of Ray Guy in clay, and (with a support rod inserted in the sculpture for stability) hand-carried it to a Florida foundry where it was cast into bronze.

[edit] Pro Kicking Camp

In 2005, Ray Guy helped organize and participated in two-day kicking camps, held throughout the United States, for high-school punters and placekickers.

Since many collegiate punters nominated for the Ray Guy Award are either former students or work at his kicking camps, Guy himself does not participate in the voting process to avoid accusations of favoritism.