ExtremeRavens Posted yesterday at 12:00 PM Posted yesterday at 12:00 PM Jordan Stout trudged into the Pacific Ocean at high tide. Far enough off the coast of San Diego that the water splashed his chin. Stout and two friends, one a fellow NFL punter, played a game: bury your foot into the ocean floor, lift the opposite knee and try to stay upright the longest against an avalanche of waves. Then another game: body surfing competition, chasing the tallest waves and riding them back to shore. They played Spikeball. And Pickleball. A few rounds of golf, too. Raiders punter AJ Cole, who shared in that nearly two-month West Coast excursion this summer, praised San Diego as a place they could “fully train and fully offseason at the same time.” It laid the groundwork for Stout to author a season worthy of All-Pro consideration: He leads the NFL in net average punt yards (44.9) and booted the third-longest try this season (74). This week, Stout was named to his first Pro Bowl. The Virginia native returned from San Diego with a newfound confidence, perhaps manifesting in California cool, and a new go-to kick. “I just feel like it’s all clicking,” said Stout, a 2022 fourth-round pick with his name all over the Penn State record books. “I feel like I’m in a flow state. I’m not worried out there. I just go out there and do it, and I walk off the field.” What he’s doing, more often than not, is called a boomerang kick. And it’s the reason he’s playing his way into a payday this offseason. Stout recently tried explaining what the boomerang kick is. He held out one finger to trace the flight path of the ball, shooting it off his foot up to the sky. It curls back like a ribbon and plops at the far end of the field. Stout’s finger shivered, mimicking the way the football dribbles in unpredictable ways. “There are different variations of it,” he said. “I don’t know how to explain it. It goes up like this, and then it comes down the opposite way. And I can dictate when it happens, but also sometimes I’m trying to hit a normal boomerang that goes to the right, and I hit it up, and it goes to the left. So, the unpredictability of the punt is really cool.” Special teams coordinator Chris Horton likened the punt to a helicopter propeller spinning violently above the field. “You don’t know where that ball’s going to land,” he said. Stout can hit the ball three times in a row, long snapper Nick Moore said, and “the ball does three different things in the air.” It’s perfect for blustery AFC North conditions. Every punter in the NFL has at least two kicks in his arsenal: the traditional spiral, with a flight path similar to any Lamar Jackson deep ball; and an end-over-end, which glides like a wheel. The boomerang keeps opposing teams guessing. It forces returners into making a judgment call. As coach John Harbaugh pointed out, the new addition to Stout’s repertoire came off “the Sam Koch list.” Koch was Stout’s predecessor, an innovative 16-year veteran who spent a few years on the Ravens coaching staff and still helps Stout to this day. Koch helped fine-tune Stout’s boomerang. Stout diligently drilled it in San Diego. Then he showed up to training camp with a new club in his golf bag that has him kicking with gusto. Cole knows Stout’s ascension as well as anyone. They’ve shared every offseason since college, so this breakout season comes as no shock. But two memories came to mind. First was in Birmingham, Alabama, in the summer of 2020. Cole didn’t know much about the kid from Virginia Tech at this particular workout. He remembers standing near one goal line. On a field full of kickers and punters booming the ball to and fro, one piercing thud startled Cole. He turned around to find Stout, who had just launched a ball 80 yards (the length of that shortened field) with no wind. “Do that again,” Cole said, as if he were a talent scout discovering his next big star. Stout delivered, “again and again and again,” Cole recalled, repeatedly smashing the ball nearly the length of the field. “Dude, you have the freakiest leg I have ever seen in my entire life,” Cole said. Stout’s technical skills were still pretty raw at the time. But the sound of his foot-to-ball contact left Cole stunned. Jordan Stout was named to his first Pro Bowl on Tuesday. (Karl Merton Ferron/Staff) Fast-forward a year. Stout transferred to Penn State, where he had a solid but unspectacular season. They’re all back in Birmingham, punters ranging from college to the Canadian Football League to the NFL. A group of 15 or so went to TopGolf to blow off some steam. “He was basically telling people,” Cole recalled, “‘What I would really like to do this year is just ball out and declare [for the draft].’” A few guys scoffed. Stout had only played one year in the mighty Big Ten. But Cole doesn’t like to bet against “people with freaky leg talent.” In 2021, Stout proved him right: He was named Big Ten Punter of the Year and first-team All-Big Ten by coaches and media. That was good enough for the Ravens to use a 2022 fourth-round draft pick on their new punter. There’s been steady improvement year over year, until the puzzle pieces clicked into place this fall. “I feel like throughout my whole career, I’ve worked as hard as I can while still mentally stable,” Stout said. “It kind of feels like this is four years of work that’s finally paying off. I’m not working any harder than I ever have.” As this season wore on, most of the attention around the Ravens focused on a team that was, at one point, 1-5, and now on the brink of missing the playoffs altogether. Folks have been interested in the defense, which was porous early, dominant during a five-game heater and confounding as of late. It’s more compelling to talk about the two-time Most Valuable Player at quarterback and the backslide Lamar Jackson endured, rendering Baltimore’s offense a shell of itself, than a special teamer whose job it is to hand the other team the ball. Punters occupy a forgotten corner of the locker room. If they’re playing well enough, nobody talks about them. “They are also the game’s vestigial organs,” Louisa Thomas of The New Yorker writes, “a remnant of the days when football was ‘foot ball,’ before the invention of that modern horror, the forward pass.” Punters are as important as they are unexciting. That is, until that afternoon in late November. It was Week 12 against the Jets. Shortly before halftime, Stout launched the ball 74 yards, a career long that tied Koch’s franchise record. Ravens punter Jordan Stout shares his reaction to his career-long 74-yard punt that tied a franchise record. Stout punted four times in Sunday's win over the Jets, averaging just over 60 yards per kick. : Taylor Lyons, @baltimoresun pic.twitter.com/MpikuMNaDj — The Baltimore Sun (@baltimoresun) November 23, 2025 Then, in the fourth quarter, he angled a 67-yard boot that skipped out of bounds, pinning the Jets near their own goal line. Stout turned to the home crowd and flared his arms wide, as if embodying Maximus from Gladiator, shouting, “Are you not entertained!?” His long snapper caught a glimpse of it on the Jumbotron. “He deserved that,” Moore started to say, when a nearby Charlie Kolar butted in. “Oh, my God, are we still talking about the punt?” he asked, in jest. The tight end was on the field, too, and clarified that he loved it. But to his point, yes, any Stout discourse will include that kick for a while. It was like an approach shot to the 17th green on a spring Saturday. Stout’s punt wasn’t the finisher, nor the final stand. But he set up the Ravens defense to carry a win across the finish line. Harbaugh called it a “red letter” day for the special teams unit, much thanks to Stout. The punter entertained more than a few interview scrums. He was among the most popular in Baltimore’s postgame locker room. That continued in the weeks to follow, with a growing interest in where this success came from. San Diego? Finding a punt variation that fits his strengths? The swagger, the kick, the execution, it’s all intertwined. Stout admitted he’s motivated by bringing smiles to the faces of every coach on the Ravens’ sideline. But also, he beamed, “I want to be the best to ever do it.” Have a news tip? Contact Sam Cohn at scohn@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/samdcohn. Ravens kicker Tyler Loop leaps onto punter Jordan Stout after Stout's punt pinned the Jets deep inside their own territory. Stout has had the best season of his NFL career in 2025. (Karl Merton Ferron/Staff) View the full article Quote
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