Players rally around Dodge, don't pine for Feagles

It sounds like Tom Coughlin will have patience with Matt Dodge’s punting, at least for another week. "Patience is not a good word right now," he said. The players who are on the field with him are certainly giving him plenty of support.

“Just keep his head up, man,” special teams captain Chase Blackburn said of his advice to Dodge. “He’s a rookie, first game, get the jitters out. He got drafted for a reason. He can punt the ball and he can do it well. Just get the cobwebs out, any mindtricks that you got, and go play … It’s a mindgame you play with yourself. You know how to do it, you just have to remember how to do it over and over every time.”

Bryan Kehl, one of the Giants’ special teamers, said the flight of the punt has a lot to do with the coverage. Line drives are killers.

“If a guy is catching it and the coverage is 20 yards away, any returner worth his salt is going to get some yards off that,” he said. “That’s part of it. And then we have to get down there and tackle. It’s a quintessential team sport and it does not work unless everyone is doing their part.”

You might think guys like Kehl and Blackburn who have to run down and tackle punt returners long for the days of Jeff Feagles, who would knock his punts out of bounds and hardly ever leave a returner in position to gain meaningful yards. Think again.

“To be 100 percent honest, there are some of us that are glad (to have Dodge over Feagles),” Kehl said. “This gives us a chance to get some more tackles. Real talk, we used to complain with Feagles, as good of a punter as he was, we didn’t get any tackles off punts. If you’re a defensive player you want to get tackles. Every chance you get you’re excited for it.”