To understand what Koch did, you have to know what the kick was supposed to look like.
In American football, kicking and kicking are different.
Kicking refers to field goals and kickoffs, when the ball is kicked from the ground to score points or to start a game. Meanwhile, kicking refers to the act in which the team recovers the ball when the player kicks the ball from his hands into the opponent's half of the field as far as possible.
Traditionally, punters would kick “spinner” balls that rose into the air – the benefit being that they traveled farther. But the downside is that the flight path is predictable and easy for the receiving player to follow.
“The kicking philosophy is — and always has been — to throw the ball as high as possible, to allow your team to get there and force the punt returner to make a fair catch,” says Randy Brown, kicking coach with the kicking team. Baltimore Ravens.
A fair catch is when a player receiving the ball has the right to take the ball without interference, but once caught, the ball is dead and he cannot attempt to gain any yards.
Koch's Ravens were facing the Pittsburgh Steelers and one of their main attractions was Antonio Brown, the league's best punt returner.
The Ravens needed to try something bold, so they decided Koch would intentionally miss kicks.
Koch points his hips in one direction, kicks it left or right but cuts and slices the ball the other way. He would hit “knuckle balls,” where instead of the ball spiraling cleanly through the air, it would wobble erratically.
Most importantly, he will use “dropping the ball”, a technique used mostly in Australian rules football, and up to this point only in very specific cases in American football, where the ball tends to be kicked so that it turns over to the end. -end.
The balls will travel fewer yards but give the receiver less time to react and prepare for his return.
And it worked.
Koch punted six times against Brown in that game, forcing him to make four fair catches, while leaving the other two kicks alone to go out of bounds.
“We told Sam, 'Get the ball on the ground as fast as you can,'” Randy Brown says. “Instead of hitting a ball that had a five-second hold, our goal was to hit one ball with three-and-a-half seconds.
“What we were doing was going completely against the grain.”
“It would seem like they were hitting the wrong shots and the crowd would boo, but we knew what we were doing,” Koch adds.
In the game of inches, Koch's stats improved by yards. Net yardage is the defining statistic for a gambler. In 2013, Koch's net passing yards were 38.9, good enough for 22nd in the league. In 2014, it was 43.2, the best in the league.
“It was very exciting,” Koch recalls. “We've created something that's completely against the rules of how many years ago.”
For Brown, it was a “eureka moment.”
“If you're going to do something like that on a Sunday night in front of over 20 million people, you don't want your player to be embarrassed, and as a coach, you don't want to be embarrassed.” He says.
“This was not a pre-season match. From a coaching point of view, it was confidence in the player to execute his skill on the big stage.”