Iowa punter Tory Taylor received the Ray Guy Award for the best punter in college football on Friday night. Taylor won the award over Florida State's Alex Mastromanno and Vanderbilt's Matthew Hayball.
Somehow, this was Taylor's first year as a finalist for the award, and it will also be his last; he announced recently that he would declare for the NFL after this season.
Taylor's 86 punts in 2023 were the most in FBS, and his 4,119 total punting yards (and counting) this season are clear of the next-highest FBS punter (Riley Riethman of Navy) by 752 yards -- the same margin as Riethman has over the 16th-best punter. Taylor has 36 punts of 50+ yards and six punts of 60+ this season; 30 of his punts have been downed inside the 20 this season, including 12 inside the 10 and six inside the 5.
On Taylor's first punt of the Citrus Bowl against Tennessee on January 1, he will almost certainly break the all-time single-season punting yardage mark, as he's only 13 yards away from record-holder Johnny Pingel of Michigan State, set in 1938.
Taylor was a four-year starter with the Hawkeyes and arguably the linchpin of Kirk Ferentz's "complementary football" system during his time in Iowa City; Ferentz's fourth-down strategy near midfield involved sending Taylor onto the field and giving his defense an opportunity to make a play — a strategy he could rely on with Taylor's wicked accuracy placing punts deep inside opposing territory.
Of course, having All-American and likely future NFL star Cooper DeJean as a gunner for most of his punts didn't hurt.
Indeed, few programs regard special teams as integral to the team's success as Iowa does, and that bore itself out time and time again over the last four years. Consider the following big defensive plays that either scored or directly led to 58 points during Iowa's last four seasons:
2020 MSU: Charlie Jones 54-yard punt return TD
2021 ISU: Matt Hankins INT, setting up 49-yard TD drive
2021 ISU: Jack Campbell 6-yard fumble recovery TD
2021 Kent State: Lukas Van Ness sack, safety
2021 Colorado State: Jack Campbell fumble recovery, setting up 6-yard TD
2021 Penn State: Jestin Jacobs interception, setting up -8-yard FG drive
2021 Nebraska: Lukas Van Ness sack, safety
2022 South Dakota St.: Jack Campbell TFL, safety
2022 South Dakota St.: Joe Evans sack, safety
2022 Rutgers: Kaevon Merriweather 30-yard fumble return TD
2022 Illinois: Seth Benson fumble recovery, setting up -6-yard FG drive
2022 Kentucky: Cooper DeJean 14-yard INT return TD
2023 Illinois: Joe Evans sack, safety
Every. single. one. of those scores — scores made in all three phases of the game, to be noted — were immediately* preceded by Taylor punts inside the 20 yard line — often inside their 10 or even 5.
*Here, "immediately" means after or during the first series of downs of the drive on the ensuing possession. Essentially, turnovers and three-and-outs with big punt returns. Amazingly, several more defensive scores happened after Taylor punts but by strict definitions didn't qualify.
"Directly setting up three points" doesn't adequately encapsulate the majesty of what might have been Taylor's finest performance, against Penn State in 2021:
Thanks again to elite gunner play from DeJean and Terry Roberts, Taylor pinned Penn State inside its 10 five times in that top-5 showdown in Iowa City, often sending backup QB Ta'Quan Roberson into the hornet's nest of Kinnick's north end zone.
This game, with the nation watching and a win to show for it, properly propelled Taylor from crowd favorite to something between a folk hero and mascot for punting, and he never left that stage since in his Hawkeye career.
Taylor wasn't Iowa's first Australian punter, as the continent continues to pump elite punters into the states; Michael Sleep-Dalton, a grad transfer from Arizona State, joined the Hawkeyes to decent-if-unspectacular result in 2019, averaging 41.7 yards per punt and earning honorable mention All-Big Ten for his work. If nothing else, Sleep-Dalton's tenure was proof of concept for an Aussie punter in Iowa City, and that's all Ferentz needed.
As mentioned before, Taylor is a mere 13 yards away from breaking the FBS record for single-season punting yards, and in a college football world where offensive yardage is increasingly easier to come by (for most teams), there simply won't be many candidates with enough punts to even come close to that record. So history may well be on Taylor's side for the foreseeable.
Even if his season record is smashed in 2024, though, Taylor's place in Hawkeye history is utterly unimpeachable, both in fan sentiment and in the record books, and the black-and-gold faithful are already looking forward to the opportunity to watch Taylor boom punts for a paycheck on Sundays — and maybe even taking aim at the NFL's records, if the opportunities are there. Who knows?
Congratulations to Taylor on a well-earned, richly deserved award.
