Punterville State of the Punter: 49ers-Vikings has changed Punterville

Mayor of Punterville here.

Citizens, something dark and tragic has happened to our fair city. In the San Francisco 49ers loss to the Minnesota Vikings somthing just un-like our hero Mitch Wishnowsky happened. The Vikings managed to block a 49ers punt—but the 49ers special teams continues to underachieve so something ridiculous like that isn’t surprising (or funny) anymore.

But what was? Why did this blocked punt happen?

So the big narrative is how Wishnowsky just stood there, waiting for the Vikings to take the ball.

Um. Ok. I don’t think that’s exactly what happened.

I will defend our hero at the start of this. Watch Wishnowsky’s helmet. He looks left after the block, following through over his shoulder, thinking the defender got the ball and took off. When he looks straight again, he stares at the ball as a Vikings defender comes running in.

The latter half—the staredown, is what can be concerning. It looks like he’s waiting for the ball to roll towards him. This is just strange, but it’s a split-second decision in a play that you usually hope never happens.

There are a couple of questions here. First, if that’s what the punter is coached to do, yes, it sounds ridiculous, but the last thing you want is the punter making a head-first dive for the ball to get his bell rung and put on IR. Second, if that isn’t what he’s coached to do, why didn’t he make a single play on the ball?

Overall I think it was pretty fast and the moment he looked the wrong way, he knew he was out of luck. Everything after just looked a bit sluggish on Wishnowsky’s part. Could he have made a play on the ball? Probably. It was a split second decision.

So, should Wishnowsky have dove on the ball? Or was there not much he could do in that situation? Curious about what you all think. I mean, playing couch-coach makes me say, “Yeah, he just stood there,” but I think he was trying to process where the ball was as well as make the play. A play not going at all according to plan requires a split-second decision.

What do you think? And we need to rate the state of Punterville.