Gunner: A Scandurro Story

BY TIM SCANDURRO, with cover photo by Parker Waters

“You’re  trying to beat two guys in what amounts to a running street fight on a dead sprint.” —Five-time All-Pro special teamer Steve Tasker, on the role of punt team gunner

On a sun-soaked November Homecoming afternoon, the Tulane Green Wave and its sellout crowd started Saturday’s game as kindred spirits:  Not all there at kickoff, and slow to arrive.

Even for the football junkies among us, leaving the festive confines of the LBC Quad wasn’t easy on a glorious Chamber of Commerce afternoon.  For the men on the home sideline, getting the game started wasn’t easy either.  Our offense began with a quick three-and-out possession against an unheralded Florida Atlantic defense, and then a second one.  Out trotted our punt team.

There are few things that can flip the momentum of a football game like a long punt return.  The primary job of preventing that falls on the two players flanked wide on either side of the line of scrimmage.  There are various names in the football lexicon for them.  These include flyers, bullets, and kamikazes, but the most common of these is “gunner.”  The gunner’s job is to get downfield as fast as possible and get in position to immediately tackle the returner or fall on a muffed punt. 

Opposite the gunner is a player, and sometimes two players especially in the pro game, who is called a jammer or a vise.  He has the job of preventing the gunner from doing his.

Both players will scratch and claw and fight for every inch, by any means necessary.  For the gunner, it’s all about getting a clean release and if possible stemming and ‘stacking’ the jammer behind him.  For the jammer it’s about maintaining leverage on the gunner and being able to slow his progress or push him wide of the returner. 

A good gunner has to have a lot of traits hard to find in a single player.  Quickness and strength off the line.  The ability to release inside or outside and hide that intention from the jammer.  Long speed.  The ability to throttle down on approach.  The ability to move laterally and to tackle in space against the best athletes on the opposing team.  And the ability to time the angle of the approach and arrive at the optimum moment,  working in tandem with the punter, the other gunner and the members of the cover team.

It is difficult to describe how much better our punt cover teams have been the last several years compared to Tulane teams of the past, and it all starts with the skill set and want-to of our gunners.  Those roles on this year’s team are filled by Shaun Nicholas and TJ Smith.

Nicholas is a 6’4, 185 pound former wide receiver from West Jefferson High School who was converted to cornerback.  The position switch suits the player.  He is on both of our cover units and plays the game with a giant chip on his shoulder and a controlled and sometimes uncontrolled fury, relishing every opportunity to blast something in front of him and then let the opponent know about it.

Smith is a lower division transfer player who opened eyes in camp with his rare athleticism, speed and quickness.  Fans will remember he blocked a field goal earlier this year and he also ran a kickoff back for a touchdown Saturday that was negated by a penalty. 

Both players, in the parlance of our young staff, “have that dawg in them.”

Back to our second punt.  Our punter Alec Clark—and what a huge asset he has been—boomed a 53 yarder high into the blinding sun.  Easton Messer, FAU’s best player and a wide receiver by trade, camped under it.  Meanwhile TJ Smith took an outside release and beat the jammer immediately, who didn’t even try to chase him.  On the other side Shaun Nicholas took an inside release and beat his man up the middle of the field.

The returner figured with the depth of the kick that he wouldn’t need to fair catch it.  But at the last instant he sensed Smith closing on him hard, and panicked.  He mishandled the punt, and Smith squared him up at the waist and put him on the ground.  His running mate Nicholas was in perfect position to fall on the ball immediately at the Owl 14 yard line.  One play later, we were in the end zone and on the way to a comfortable win.

These two young men, with the pride they have in their roles and the work they put into a difficult craft, woke our football team and our crowd up and changed the course of the game.

As far as the end result in terms of our hopes and dreams, it was a mixed bag.  USF lost at Navy, which was huge for us because it opens a clear path to the conference championship game for the fourth straight year and a decent shot at hosting it.  On the other hand, our two primary challengers for a CFP ranking this week, James Madison and North Texas, both blasted their opponents in more impressive fashion.  Nobody wants to hear it, but we remain a banged-up team with a lot of guys playing hurt (some publicly known and some not), and it shows. We did not win the beauty contest this week, and it’s going to be a long and stressful wait for Tuesday night’s CFP ranking release.

But hey, we’re smack dab in the middle of the national conversation.  I know a lot of fan bases that would love the chance to be on pins and needles right now. 

Thanks to a huge play by two unsung heroes Saturday, we get to enjoy this crazy and dramatic ride for another week and perhaps beyond. 

Considering where we were two short weeks ago walking out of the Alamodome, there’s nowhere else we’d rather be.