Punt returns have been a work in progress for the Tigers all season.
LSU began this season with some issues on the special teams front. Since the Troy game the Tigers have improved in virtually every aspect of the special teams, especially senior receiver DJ Chark on the punt returns.
With a 75-yard punt return in LSU’s 27-23 win over Auburn, Chark has shown he is capable of making an impact on special teams. However, it has not been smooth sailing.
Even as he stacks up 186 yards, with an average of 14.3 per return, Chark often struggles to track and hold on to the ball before he makes his run.
“It’s not about him at all,” LSU coach Ed Orgeron said. “There’s a couple of things — we tried a couple of blocks. But it doesn’t matter. We’ve got to do a good enough job of giving him some room to return. Obviously the first one, he bobbled it. But we have utmost confidence in him.”
After a sub-par punt return performance against Arkansas, Chark is looking to improve in the final games moving forward.
“Just catch the ball, you know, that’s all I can do and I have to do a better job of that,” he said.
Orgeron constantly asserts that Chark’s troubles are not his own problems, but that of the entire special teams unit.
“We have to do a better job of holding our guy up at the line of scrimmage and getting guys out of his face to give him some room,” Orgeron said. “We have a wall return, we have a middle return, but it’s holding the guy up so he can catch the ball and get north and south. We haven’t done that well in the last couple of weeks.”
Chark says it all boils down to the mechanics of how the opposing team punts the ball. Changing the yardage or the hang time of the punt changes how Chark has to catch the ball.
Catching the ball from a punt is completely different than catching the ball thrown to him by a quarterback.
“A deep ball, you’re running already at an angle but you have an idea of where it’s going to be,” Chark said. “With a punt, you just have to see it off the foot. With the deep ball, you’re running forward and with a punt the guys are running to you so I think that’s the biggest difference.”
Most of the time, punters will not do things the exact same way as they do in the film. It takes on-field and in-game adjustments by Chark and everyone else on the field to make it work. Good punters have a way of throwing off the opposing team, Chark said.
“Usually going into the game they’ll do their regular punt, average 40 to 45 yards,” Chark said. “But now teams are preferring to punt it 35 to 40 because it gives their coverage team way more time to get to you. A lot more hang time.”
Chark explains that if a guy punts normally, he will have no problem making the reception and even going for another touchdown. But for now, he is just focused on catching it and keeping it for LSU’s offense.
While shorter punts cause issues for Chark, he says he never expects them to be short. Mostly everything that goes into returning a punt are in the moment adjustments.
“The minute you start expecting it to be short is when it goes over your head,” Chark said. “You have to judge it, and a lot of the time the ball gets height, but when it drops at the last minute you have to run under it and get it. There’s a lot of different things that go into it.”
“You have to see everything. I see the ball off the foot, locate everybody, then relocate the ball. I just have to trust what I saw when I look down for the split second,” Chark said.
