- Okay, I'm gonna be honest with you.
The guy who holds the High Score here,
he's likely never giving it up.
And regardless, it's a pretty hard game just to complete.
Your goal is to collect a punt,
then use your speed and elusiveness
to dodge defenders and make it across the goal line.
Do that, and your score counts.
With your points determined
by how many yards you cover in your return.
But while you can control things
like how fast and how agile you are,
a big part of this game comes down to luck.
You don't really get to decide
where you're going to start from
and therefore if you even have a shot at the High Score.
And usually if you have a lot of ground to cover,
your opponent just has more room to stop you short.
So like I said, it's a pretty tough game.
But, that just mean those who have set the high scores,
have done something special.
To give an example of how hard it is
to return punts a record setting distance,
look at Devin Hester.
He's arguably the best to ever play this game,
with more career touchdowns than anyone else
in NFL history.
But when looking at the high scores,
Hester doesn't even crack the top 50.
Twice he finished with 89 yard returns,
but when the difficulty setting's been raised,
Hester hasn't been able to sniff the top 10.
Partially because it's littered with absurdity.
Take Tavon Austin, for instance.
He's a perfect case for what is needed
to set a High Score worthy punt return.
The Rams took him in the first round
of the 2013 draft out of West Virginia
where he had spent four years making huge plays.
Mainly thanks to the fact that the kid could fly.
But an underrated part of his game, dude's sneaky.
He put it altogether his rookie year against the Colts.
When Pat McAfee hit what looked like
a perfect coffin corner kick,
Austin immediately began waving teammates away.
By the time the ball landed, only one Colt was nearby
and he happened to be face down in the end zone.
Austin snagged the ball off the bounce
when it was at the two, slid past some would-be tacklers,
and hugged the sideline the rest of the way
for a 98 yard return.
So, how did he get so free to have a shot at a High Score?
Well, the announcers' best guess was
that by waving off his teammates,
Austin had fooled the Colts into thinking
he was calling for a fair catch.
- [Announcer] Tim, I think a lotta the Colt players,
they saw him waving to get away from the ball,
as if not to touch it but I never saw his arm go up
for the fair catch. - And neither did I.
- NFL scouts, I'll say it again.
Forget about those metrics that don't matter,
like strength, find dudes that are sneaky.
It can go a long way.
And for Austin it vaulted him straight into the top 10.
But 98 yards, that's only good enough to tie for 3rd.
And even that is a crowded spot.
He joined guys like Dennis Morgan,
who touched the ball just 69 times as a pro
but made one of them count.
Or Charlie West who in a 12 year career
scored exactly one touchdown,
doing so in spectacular fashion.
Then there's Gil Lefebvre,
the founding father of punt return.
The game has seen just a few patches since he played it
but that shouldn't take away from the fact his 98 yarder
stood as the High Score for six decades.
We don't have video
but we do have something just as good: newspaper reports!
Gil dodged two bruising would-be tacklers,
reversed his field, eluded a half-dozen more
of the enemy and twisted, turned,
and sprinted sensationally for 98 yards and a touchdown.
The only problem with old Gil was he left room
for someone to beat him.
And one of those who did was Patrick Peterson.
The former LSU Tiger did so with a bit of flair, too.
His first year in Arizona,
Peterson's pretty terrible Cardinals team
played an even more terrible Rams team.
Naturally, these one win teams needed overtime
to determine bragging rights.
That's where Peterson entered.
He had already shown that he had a knack for this game.
As a senior in college,
he returned a pair of punts for scores.
One of which coming against a West Virginia squad
with a sophomore Tayvon Austin.
And in his very first game as a pro
he matched Hester's career long
with an 89 yarder of his own which served
as the winning score.
He notched another 80 plus yard return
the week before the Rams came to town
and now in overtime, showed his legs were fresh.
He back pedaled to the one, brought the ball in,
cut across the field then began the long sprint ahead,
breaking one tackle then dodging a few more
plus a very deliberate spin.
From there, the last 60 yards were easy.
And as he reached the end zone,
he had done something no one else had in NFL history.
An exactly 99 yard punt return.
Of his achievement, Peterson said I knew that was gutsy.
I decided to catch the ball and run for my life.
It was spectacular.
It was a walk-off score.
And it was only good enough for 2nd place.
But Patrick, may I remind you that 1st is the worst,
2nd's the best and 3rd,
the one with the hairy chest.
(he laughs) So lame, I'm sorry.
Everyone up to this point has many things in common.
They're fast, they can make tacklers miss,
but there's one other key characteristic,
every one of them accomplished their record return
during their rookie year.
And it makes a ton of sense.
You'll likely never be faster
than you first season in the league,
you probably haven't suffered an injury
that would kill some of your elusiveness.
But the biggest factor, when you're young,
you just don’t know any better.
To notch a High Score, you have to take some risks
and inexperience can help you throw caution to the wind.
Just to re-examine what Tayvon did,
I'm not saying it was dumb of him
to catch this with his back
to the 10 dudes swarming his way,
I'm just saying that had he touched it
and not caught it, it likely would've landed
right into the lap of the Colt already hanging out
in the end zone.
Even his head coach admitted to wanting Austin
to get away from the ball, a move that might make sense
in the game of football, but not in Return of the Punt.
To be great, sometimes you've gotta be reckless.
Or, you can be Dwayne Harris.
Like everyone else, he's a burner.
But he's also been around the league long enough
that he's had to find other ways to gain an edge.
The experience points he's earned
have been spent on intelligence.
Which he put to good use in the 2018 season.
As the Raiders faced the Broncos
on Monday Night Football, Denver looked to pin Oakland deep.
After letting the ball go over his head,
Harris kept tracking the play as the Broncos' coverage team
did their best to prevent a touchback.
But the moment Denver touched it without downing it,
Harris knew he was set.
He scooped the ball up, sprinted towards the other sideline
and got the corner.
From there speed did the rest
and he tied Peterson's 99 yard return.
Compared to Austin's dangerous run back,
Harris had the benefit of knowing the NFL rulebook.
Since Denver had touched it, the worst thing
that could happen would be Raiders' ball
from the point of first touch.
But with the coverage unit getting ready
to celebrate their own efforts,
Harris stole the show.
And afterward, he reminded everyone that sometimes,
it can be pretty cool to be smart.
But again, being smart can only get you so far.
And if there's any kids watching,
that's the main takeaway of this video.
Sometimes the way to the top
isn't by taking advantage of your knowledge,
it's by taking advantage of others' stupidity.
That's how I got here.
With that in mind, we head to New Orleans.
During the 1994 season, the LA Rams visited the Saints
and a backup corner stole the show.
Robert Bailey had never returned a punt in the NFL.
Which normally would make it tough to set the record
for longest punt return.
But since he wasn't a starter,
he saw action on special teams.
And simply being on the field was all it took
against the Jim Mora led Saints.
While this Rams team wasn't great,
the Saints were at the start of a dysfunctional free-fall.
Which helps make sense of what happened on October 23rd.
With 4:16 to play and the Saints up 10, they punted away.
Bailey was set up to help block on a return.
But as the ball came down in the end zone,
both teams figured the play was dead, except for Bailey.
He watched as the ball bounced at the back
of the end zone, but didn't go out of bounds.
And then he pounced.
He scooped up the ball
as both teams headed to their sidelines
and the announcers tried to piece things together.
- [Announcer] Wait a minute, what's going on out here?
(crowd cheering)
That is one of the most unbelievable plays
I've ever seen, they never downed the ball,
it was sitting in the end zone.
And the Rams picked it up and scored!
- 103 yards.
His first ever punt return on a play
where he wasn't even supposed to return it.
And he cemented a High Score that likely will never fall.
Technically, it could, just in a way
that probably wouldn't fly in the modern NFL.
See, while inexperience can lead to some wild plays,
it's hard to imagine even a rookie doing what is needed
to break Bailey's record.
The NFL has updated its rules to make it so the ball is dead
as soon as it hits the end zone
as long as the receiving team hasn't touched it.
Which does make it technically possible
for a return man to go rogue,
see the ball sailing into the end zone,
catch the ball from at least four yards deep,
not care about how pissed off his coach will be
and hope that his actions were so unexpected
that the coverage unit has given up
to allow the run back to go off without a hitch.
Then, and only then, would we get a new High Score.
That would then definitely get called back for holding.
But even if that absurd situation never happens,
there's already been enough awesome jaw dropping spectacles
that make punt returns pretty amazing.
There's so much potential every time
and while it is kind of rare for someone
to actually get their score to count in return of the punt,
these guys have shown that all it takes
is the slightest of chances
for the most unbelievable plays to become history.
Fun fact, my dad could return a punt 200 yards
if he wanted to.
Thanks for watching,
check out more episodes of High Score here,
including my personal favorite,
what players have jacked up the most threes in an NBA game?
It gets pretty absurd.
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