Raiders owner Al Davis surprised the football world in 1973 when he made punter Ray Guy the 23rd pick in the first round of the NFL Draft.
Guy, who died Thursday at age 72 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, after a lengthy illness, rewarded Davis’ faith by becoming a beloved Raiders legend and the first and only punter to be named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He won three Super Bowls with the Raiders.
It was Guy who popularized “hang time” with soaring punts that would reach eye level of fans in the outer reaches of a stadium, enabling coverage teams to make tackles and swing field position the way of the Raiders.
In an interview with this news organization in 2014, Guy said he’d never heard the words “hang time” until coach John Madden used them to describe his kicks.
In 1977, Houston coach Bum Phillips accused Guy of using footballs inflated with helium because he’d never seen punts so high. The Oilers sent footballs to Rice University for testing. No helium was found.
“The Raiders Family is mourning the passing of Ray Guy, a legendary punter who revolutionized special teams during his 14 seasons with the Silver and Black,” the Raiders said in a statement Thursday. “The prayers of the entire Raider Nation are with the Guy family at this time.”
The Georgia native was a tremendous all-around athlete, and it was that athletic prowess that enabled him to become a peer to Raiders teammates rather than be considered a specialist. Guy was a standout multi-sport athlete in high school and at Southern Miss and played both safety and quarterback in addition to punting.
Guy was selected four different times as a pitcher in the Major League Baseball draft and intercepted eight passes as a senior at Southern Miss.
“I never really had a teacher, a coach or a special camp to attend to learn the art of punting,” Guy said in his 2014 Hall of Fame induction speech. “My high school coach showed me two things about foot alignment and ball placement, and that was pretty much it.
“I was a good athlete and could have been a major league pitcher or an NBA basketball player, but I knew God had something special for me and eventually one sport would stand out beyond the rest. Playing in the NFL for the Raiders was my destiny, and I never looked back or questioned my decision.”
In a separate 2014 interview, Guy recalled the reaction of his new teammates after being a first-round draft pick. He won them over with his athletic skill as he was the Raiders’ emergency quarterback and a willing and aggressive tackler on kickoff returns.
“I know a lot of the veterans were thinking, ‘What’s Al doing?” Guy said. “He’s drafting a punter with his No. 1 draft choice? How is that going to help?’ But after the first day of practice, it was obvious I was more than just a punter.”
Guy’s career average of 42.4 yards per punt is pedestrian by today’s standards, but he was playing for a strong team that often had good field position. His job was to get maximum altitude on kicks and ideally keep opponents inside the 20-yard line. From 1976-86, he put 210 punts inside the 20-yard line — more than twice the number of any other punter.
The athletic ability of Guy was on full display when the Raiders beat Washington 38-9 in Super Bowl XVIII in Tampa Bay. Lost amid the highlights including Marcus Allen’s 74-yard touchdown run and Jack Squirek’s pick-six before halftime was an early punt from Guy with his back to the end zone.
“The ball was snapped 10 feet high, Ray somehow goes up and gets it and gets off a 42-yard punt,” former Raiders coach Tom Flores said in 2014. “It could have changed the entire game. Nobody even talked about it.”
Current Raiders punter A.J. Cole, an All-Pro punter last season and Pro Bowl participant, is aware of what Guy did to revolutionize the position.
“The Raiders have the greatest history of the punter position of any franchise, and that started with Ray Guy,” Cole told reporters Thursday at practice in Sarasota, Florida. “The level that he got to where his name is pretty much synonymous with NFL punting, that’s not something you see a lot. It’s definitely a sad day. It’s sad to lose a legend like that.”
In 2000, Davis again bucked convention in the NFL Draft by using two draft picks on kickers — place kicker Sebastian Janikowski in the first round and punter Shane Lechler in the sixth.
Lechler played for the Raiders from 2000 through 2012 and was named All-Pro six times with seven Pro Bowl appearances.
Named to the NFL’s All-Pro team six times, Guy made seven Pro Bowls and was named the punter on the NFL’s 1970s All-Decade team as well as the punter on the league’s 75th and 100th anniversary teams.
Guy is also a member of the Mississippi and Georgia sports Hall of Fames as well as the College Football Hall of Fame and the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame, the latter coming in 2008.
The No. 44 is retired in Guy’s honor at Southern Miss, and the Ray Guy Award is given annually to the top punter in college football.
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