Dawn of the Buccaneers Punters!

Everything you never really wanted to know about the Buccaneers punting situation and never even thought to ask.

[Opens Stathead. Filters for Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 2024. Play type: Punt. Yes, punt.]

[Loads NFL Pro. Enters password. Enters it again. Refreshes. Enters it again. Player name? Jake Camarda. Fourth downs only, please: no one needs to see his kickoffs.]

Ah yes, a deep dive into Buccaneers punters. This is a totally normal activity for a Wednesday morning in May. Now let’s just see how bad this Camarda lad really was …

Dear lord. This is a special teams snuff film.

I finished the Buccaneers chapter of Aaron Schatz’s FTN Football Almanac three weeks ago. It was a piece of cake. The Bucs have won the NFC South in each of the last four years. Spoiler alert: they are projected to win it again. They re-signed all of their stars and many of their role players. The rest of the division is either a joke or, in the Falcons’ case, misery porn. The Bucs are 21-10 in divisional games since 2020. They will go at least 5-1 this year, cruise to the playoffs, then lose to some team that plays a real schedule. The end.

Just about the only position of intrigue for the Bucs this offseason is punter. The Bucs went through three of them last year, then signed two new ones as free agents. The punting situation wasn’t pertinent to the main essay, and it would merit only a sentence or two in the “special teams” section of the Bucs chapter (where I feel I could admit to a murder and no one would notice), but morbid punter curiosity kept poking me.

So I commenced to grinding film.

Camarda’s 2024 season started with a 38-yard line drive from the Bucs’ 22-yard line in the opener. Commanders returner Jameson Crowder had to race up for a fair catch. Bad punt. It sparked a touchdown drive.

Against the Lions in Week 2, Camarda thwapped a 42-yard sidewinder from his own 23-yard line. Kalif Raymond spun away from the first defender for a 13-yard return. Later, and far worse, came a 43-yard can of corn from his own 11-yard line. Camarda slapped his head in frustration after the kick. Raymond fetched it for a nine-yard return. This second punt occurred with 42 seconds left in a close game. It gave the Lions the ball near scoring position. Fortunately for the Bucs, the Lions trailed by four.

Week 3, Broncos: Camarda absolutely shanked a 33-yarder from his 32-yard line, shaking his fist in disgust after the kick. The shank set up a field goal that gave the Broncos a 17-0 lead in an eventual victory.

There were also some ordinary punts in all of these games, and in other Bucs games throughout the year. But no one notices a ordinary punt. Four mistakes in three weeks is about four mistakes too many.

Todd Bowles benched Camarda at this point. Yes: BENCHED him, in favor of Trenton Gill, whom they signed amid Camarda’s struggles and stashed on the practice squad.

Camarda was a fourth-round pick in 2022. Bucs GM Jason Licht is very good at many things, including veteran retention, and I’ve interacted with him enough times to confirm that he’s a swell dude by Important NFL Person standards. But Licht is an absolute weirdo about drafting specialists: kicker Roberto Aguayo in the second round (!!!) in 2016, kicker Matt Gay in the fifth round in 2019, Camarda at a time when the Bucs quarterback was in his mid-40s and bouncing in and out of retirement.

Licht may also be a little protective of his draft projects; if the Bucs hold onto Kyle Trask for long enough, no one will question what a dubious second-round pick he was. So Todd Bowles may have treaded a bit lightly with Camarda, who was fine in 2022 and 2023 but barely survived a challenge from a camp leg named Nolan Cooney in 2024 training camp. No reason to anger the boss just yet.

Camarda returned for Week 6 against the Saints. He thumped a 54-yarder from the Bucs’ 7-yard line in the second quarter. The length wasn’t bad, but the punt drifted toward the left (from the Bucs’ perspective) sideline, while the gunner units clearly expected a punt between the hashmarks. So Rashid Shaheed fielded the punt while the Bucs coverage unit was out of position, and Shaheed is faster than Dominic Toretto. Saints touchdown.

Later, from his own 14-yard line, Camarda bounced a 41-yard knuckler to Shaheed. Camarda didn’t walk straight to his locker with a store-all box after the kick, but he might as well have. Camarda was waived a few days later.

Alrighty then. [Refreshing NFL Pro. Player name: Trenton Gill.]

Oh, I remember this cat. He was practically the Eagles MVP in their pratfall loss to the Bucs. Gill kept floating 30-some yarders in random directions. Poor Cooper DeJean, still taking his rookie lumps, wasn’t ready to chase Gill’s knuckle slurves. DeJean muffed one punt and crashed into a teammate fetching another. Gill succeeded despite himself.

Gill got the job handed back to him after the Saints game and was fine for a few weeks. Trouble started to brew in the Week 8 loss to the Falcons. Gill squirted a 42-yarder from the Bucs 32-yard line. Avery Williams fielded it with room to run, setting up a 14-yard return. The Falcons turned great field position into a touchdown. The Bucs later attempted a fake punt, a direct snap to Tavierre Thomas, and I have never seen a defense less fooled. Everyone must have known that Bowles was suffering from a punter migraine.

I started to get a punter migraine on Wednesday morning. Why was I doing this? Aren’t there better uses of my time? You would prefer to read Aaron Rodgers jokes, right?

I am doing this, in part, because punting issues are so easy to overlook. A 42-yard punt sounds fine. It would have been fine in 1990. It’s fine from midfield. But modern coaches kick from their own territory expecting an extreme swing in field position every time. The Bucs kept quietly handing opponents scoring opportunities last year. Bad punts did not cost them the Broncos game or either Falcons loss, but they were always a problem lurking in the background. And that problem kept lurking.

Also, I was frustrated by the lack of coverage of the Bucs punter saga as I researched it. Oh, I don’t expect 2,000 words from even a Bucs fansite about bad punting but … wait, actually I do. What else did Bucs fansites have to write about last year? The Chris Godwin and Mike Evans injuries, certainly. But what was there to write? “Godwin is still injured.” Meanwhile, Bowles and Licht were juggling punters like chainsaws. It merited a little closer scrutiny, don’t you think?

Bucs beat writers and bloggers usually described Camarda and Gill as “shaky.” What the hell does that mean? I was going to write “shaky” in the Almanac chapter, then realized how cheap and vague it sounded. What was Bowles going through? What did Bucs fans experience?

Bowles and Bucs fans experienced a punt-unit meltdown in the rain in the Week 9 overtime loss to Kansas City. Mecole Hardman returned one Gill punt 30 yards, though that appeared to be the coverage team’s fault. Gill’s 40 and 31-yarders from his own territory in the fourth quarter, however, were his fault; the former turned a chance to pin the opponent deep in their own territory in sloppy conditions into a Chiefs field goal drive.

Gill survived the Chiefs game and enjoyed a few uneventful weeks. Then, against the lowly Panthers in Week 13, he pooched a 22-yard hacky-sack out of bounds from the Bucs 14-yard line. The short field position allowed the Panthers to take a 10-7 lead. Later, with the game perilously close, Gill slapped a one-hopper to David Moore, who ran up to field it at the 12-yard line and took it just past the 20. Another chance to pin the opponent late in a close game squandered.

“They were very concerning, almost cost us the game basically,” Bowles said of Gill’s punts. Gill was waved after the narrow Bucs win over the Panthers.

Enter Jack Browning, an undrafted rookie out of San Diego State who spent the summer at Bills and Ravens camps. The Bucs signed Browning to their practice squad in October. They provisionally activated him for three straight weeks after cutting Gill, using a little-known clause in the collective bargaining agreement that allows a team to keep a player in limbo between the practice squad and active roster for a few weeks for “evaluation” purposes. The Bucs, in the thick of the playoff chase, were using a punter from a temp agency.

OK, so let’s load up this Browning lad…

… annnnnnd his second punt was slapped 39 yards from his own 27-yard line toward his right sideline. Raiders returner Ameer Abdullah caught it on the run and took it 14 yards.

Mama Mia. Here we go again.

Browning also got stuck in a sand trap in the Week 16 loss to the Cowboys. Kicking from his own 44-yard line, he should have been able to boom one into the Cowboys end zone, or at least close enough to force a fair catch. Instead, he angled a shallow fly to the 17-yard line, into the hands of dangerous KaVontae Turpin for a 17-yard return.

Ah, but this was all foreshadowing for Browning’s all-time Garo Yepremian moment in Week 18 against the Saints, which you must see to believe. Browning fumbles the snap, retrieves it, then tries to scissor-kick the football, which wobbles a few dozen feet downfield with several Saints in pursuit. Adam Prentice is credited with a blocked punt for the play, but the ball essentially hits him in the ribs while he is trying to figure out what the heck Browning is trying to accomplish.

Browning punted for the Buccaneers in the playoffs, then disappeared off the coast of Terre Verde in a catamaran, never to be seen again.

The Bucs signed former Giants/Broncos/elsewhere punter Riley Dixon for two years at $600 billion in March. Actually it was just $6 million, but Licht could not have been blamed had he gotten carried away.

The Bucs also added Edmonton Elks punter Jake Julien for good measure. Julien led the MAC conference in gross yards per punt from 2019 through 2021 while at Eastern Michigan. The Bucs will not be stuck with a shank specialist at punter this year, no matter what it takes.

Special teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey, who coached the Giants kicking units for many years before joining the Bucs in 2024, held onto his job. It’s worth noting that McGaughey’s coverage units often looked awful last season: missing tackles, letting returners escape what appeared to be containment, failing to field rollers before they reached the end zone. It’s hard to cover a punt that could land anywhere on the field, so McGaughey and coverage units full of veterans probably weren’t to blame. It’s still a situation worth watching if you are interested in the Bucs. And, well, you have read this far. Perhaps an undrafted free agent will step up as a special teams demon. Shilo Sanders, anyone?

Assuming Dixon holds off Julien, he may be the most important Buccaneers acquisition of the offseason. That says a lot about the continuity in Tampa, where Baker Mayfield, Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Lavonte David, Vita Vea, Antoine Winfield, Tristan Wirfs and the D’Artagnan-like Bucky Irving are all back to claim the team’s automatic tournament bid. The Bucs are familiar and easy to overlook, but they beat the Lions, Eagles and Commanders last year, and they took the Chiefs to overtime. Could competent punting be the missing piece to their Super Bowl puzzle?

Probably not. But there are worse teams to analyze in great detail on a rainy Wednesday morning in May.

And with that, time to stop procrastinating about writing the end of the Carolina Panthers chapter.

(Note: This is the first of a handful of essays inspired by my research while writing chapters for Aaron Schatz’s FTN Football Almanac 2025, which you can pre-order now.)

Riley Dixon. Photo by Jeffrey Beall via Wikimedia Commons