Why Oklahoma State punter Tom Hutton's 'funky kicks' are valuable for Brennan Presley

STILLWATER — When Oklahoma State’s Brennan Presley trots onto the field to catch a punt on game day, he feels prepared to handle any style of kick that might come flying at him.

He thanks Tom Hutton for that. The ninth-ranked Cowboys’ senior punter tests Presley’s capabilities when the two get the chance to work together in practice.

Because of his roots in Australian Rules Football, the 32-year-old Hutton can make the ball do some unconventional things in the air.

“Tom be trying to mess with me,” Presley said. “He gives me good looks, and he’ll also let me know whenever he’s about to send me one up that’s tricky. He’ll give me a helicopter one, maybe it’s one that spins a different direction than I’ve never seen.

“He can do a lot of trick ones. It helps me. I’m not saying anybody’s gonna do that in a game. I hope not. But he gives me different looks at it so I can prepare for everything.”

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Many of Hutton’s tricks are just for the practice field, not consistently effective enough to execute in games — because those are the two biggest keys to Hutton’s game: consistency and effectiveness.

When OSU coach Mike Gundy stepped to the podium for his first postgame press conference of the season, following the 58-44 win over Central Michigan, his first words weren’t about Spencer Sanders and the offense or the great start the defense got off to.

“Our target punting made a big difference tonight,” Gundy said.

As the Pokes prepare to face 16th-ranked Baylor at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at McLane Stadium in Waco, Texas, one of Gundy’s favorite weapons could be critical. Baylor’s Gavin Holmes leads the Big 12 and is 11th nationally in punt returns, averaging 16.7 yards per return with one touchdown this season.

And in a game where every inch is likely to matter — review last year’s matchup in the Big 12 title game for reference — Hutton’s value will be at a maximum.

The 32-year-old Australian, who is the oldest player in college football, came to America in 2019 with limited knowledge of the game. Working at ProKick Australia before his arrival, Hutton mostly focused on spiral punts for distance.

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“Moving over here, Gundy saw an opportunity for us to really cut down those return yards and pin them to the sidelines and stuff like that,” Hutton said. “But that came natural to me, because that’s the type of stuff I did back in Australian Rules Football.”

Once Gundy’s goal for target punting got lined up with Hutton’s knack for kicking to a location, opponents’ return yards declined. OSU allowed an average of 1.6 yards on 11 returns in Hutton’s freshman season of 2019 and cut that to 0.8 yards per return on 20 attempts last season.

“Kicking the end-over-ends, you’re not gonna get the 60-yard punts, so I gotta make my name in something else, and that’s restricting return yards,” Hutton said. “Net yards is what I look at, because I’m never gonna be leading the country in gross yards, so as long as I can keep the return yards down and get the net yards up. And the coverage team has a lot to do with that.”

Even with the focus on target punting, Hutton has increased his distance more than four yards per punt, from 38.7 as a freshman to 42.9 so far this year. He has already induced one muffed punt this season.

Back in 2017, when Texas punter Michael Dickson — an Australian now in the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks — gave the Cowboys fits, Gundy decided to pursue an Aussie punter of his own. And the experiment has paid off. With Hutton expected to conclude his career after this season, rather than stick around for his super-senior year, Gundy has found his next Aussie.

Hudson Kaak, a 21-year-old Melbourne native, committed to the Cowboys in August.

And he’s likely to arrive with some tricks that will keep OSU’s punt returners on their toes in practice, just like Hutton has done — though his trickiest kicks remain in his back pocket on game day.

“When I first got here, I knew I could do some funky kicks that they really hadn’t seen before,” Hutton said. “It started with Landon Wolf and I. We had a little competition where if he dropped one, he had to do pushups and if he caught it, I had to do pushups. So it just continued on. Whenever I get a new returner in, I just throw some weird ones up and see if they can catch them.

“It’s something I want to try, but we haven’t done it in a game just yet. Maybe just stick to what we’re good at.”

OSU at Baylor

KICKOFF: 2:30 p.m. Saturday at McLane Stadium in Waco, Texas (Fox)

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma State football: Tom Hutton's 'funky kicks' key for Cowboys