It’s a thankless job, that of a punter, but at Cincinnati we tend to keep a closer eye on them than other schools do. After all, we were blessed with the mortars that are the right legs of Kevin Huber and Pat O’Donnell.
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Huber was a mainstay of a Bearcats’ 2007 and 2008 teams that boasted punishing defenses. His 45 yards per punt in 2008 was 8th best in the country and his ability to flip the field made him just as important to UC’s defense as Connor Barwin and Mike Mickens were. Huber’s performance that season earned him 1st Team All-American Honors and the Bengals wound up drafting him in the 5th round the following April. He’s been in orange and black stripes ever since.
But the streak of talented punters at UC wouldn’t end with Huber. Next in line was the lanky, but definitely not weak, Pat O’Donnell who took a season to get up to speed as Jake Rogers took both place kicking and punting duties his freshman year but by the time he was a junior the Bearcats were again a top 25 team at this position. But when Tommy Tuberville took over for Butch Jones in 2013, who had left for Tennessee, it caused a rift in ideology between O’Donnell and UC’s new head coach.
Tuberville wanted to shift to more rugby-style punting, such that Cincinnati could place them in different spots down the field and create more issues for return teams to handle the ball. But O’Donnell, the 6’5″ tower that he is who had been working in the more traditional, spiral punt, never agreed with this. So, considering he already had a Bachelor’s Degree in hand following the 2012 season, he exerted his right as a graduate transfer and left for the Miami (FL) Hurricanes.
That left the job to John Lloyd, who took over in the role a year earlier than he had expected but performed well under the conditions. Even so, UC’s punters were never as solid as when Huber and O’Donnell were around. We as fans could never truly count on Lloyd or his successor in 2014 Sam Geraci to boot a clean ball on a consistent basis. The constant flip-flopping between them certainly didn’t help matters but, regardless, we couldn’t simply walk away and grab a snack or a beer when Cincinnati was punting. Every situation was an adventure, when we as fans collectively held our breath to see if the ball would be blasted downfield as it should or carom into one of the team’s benches.
That is, until this season apparently, with Geraci taking over the role on a full time basis. In three games the sophomore has averaged 47.6 yards per punt, good for 4th best in the country. Against Miami (OH) he averaged a whopping 53 yards per punt and even booted one for 60 yards. Yea, pretty good. Not shocking in the slightest, Geraci’s gotten better and better as the season’s gone on, raising his average from 38 yards per punt during UC’s home opener against Alabama A&M.
It’s unclear just if the young punter will reach the echelon of a Kevin Huber or Pat O’Donnell. He’s but a sophomore after all. But these are some encouraging signs from Geraci that bode well for the Bearcats in the years to come.