Albert Lewis and Ted Hendricks—Punt Block Kings

 By John Turney 

It's good to be wrong, it helps you learn.

A couple of weeks ago I had an e-mail conversation with a very astute writer who also happens to be a Hall of Fame voter. In the context of making the case for Chiefs cornerback Albert Lewis's candidacy for the Hall, this writer pointed out a couple of errors I made in a post concerning blocked kicks and punts. He was right and that post has been updated HERE.

Thanks to that writer because it helped me report the most figures for a couple of great punt blockers.

However, this goes a little further—specifically, the topic of the exchange was the number of blocked punts Ted Hendricks had in his career and who was the modern all-time leader, semi-officially. The explanation for "semi-official" will be covered in this post.

When you Google "Ted Hendricks" and "blocked kicks" the results will inevitably tell you that he had 25 in his career.  

Here is an example from the Pro Football Hall of Fame's bio on Hendricks.

One would also find that Hendricks was credited with seven blocked kicks in 1974, his lone year with the Packers. 

Again, from the Pro Football Hall of Fame website—

My error was not doing my due diligence and double-checking the totals. The only thing that was posted that altered Hendricks' total is that he shared one of his placekick blocks with Bubba Smith which reduced his total to 24½. Or, in the alternative, he can be credited with 25 in one counts the shared block fully. There is no right answer for that but going with giving each a half makes sense.

Because of the e-mail discussion, it was important to look deeper into the gamebooks. In the last couple of weeks, two things were found—

The first is that one of Hendricks's blocked punts was actually a blocked field goal. I misread the information and reported it as a punt block rather than a kick block. My error. 

The correction reduced his total of blocked punts by one and increased his blocked placekicks by one, giving him 8 blocked punts and 15½ placekicks blocked. His total number of kicks, at this point, remained unchanged, one was just moved from the wrong category to the proper one.

The second thing was Hendricks had, included in his total, two punts that ended up beyond the line of scrimmage and because of what we think is peculiar scoring they are not actually blocked punts.

Again, I did not check properly. No excuse, I got it wrong and am embarrassed about it.

In the first non-block, the gamebook tackle chart showed a blocked punt, but the actual play-by-play which is the text portion of the gamebook showed it was not a block but a one-yard punt that was "blocked by Hendricks".

Tackle charts are the totals for defensive statistics and appear in grid form usually at the end of the old gamebooks. The defensive stats are not considered official in terms of tackles, sacks, and forced fumbles but the interceptions and fumble recoveries were. 

As for blocked kicks, it was fuzzy. When doing some research at the Raiders El Segundo headquarters in the early 1990s I asked Raiders executive Al LoCasale if blocked kicks were official, and he said, "semi-official." 

That likely means they were kept by teams and did not appear in the NFL Record & Factbook so LoCasale termed it semi-official. 

With that background, the facts can be explained on the punts in question the first of which was in a Packers-Bears Monday Night football game played on October 21, 1974, at Soldier Field. 

Here is the tackle chart for shows Hendricks had a blocked punt—

Here is the play-by-text that shows the line of scrimmage was the Bear 35 and on the exchange of possession the Packers started the drive at the Bear 36. The punt went for a one-yard gain.

The same thing happened in the Raiders' 1980 season finale at the Meadowlands against the New York Giants.

 Here is the tackle chart from that game showing a block credited to Hendricks—

This is a screenshot shot of the actual text of the play—

As a result of this uncovered information, it is evident that Hendricks was credited with two blocked punts that traveled past the line of scrimmage making his actual career total of blocked seven, not the ten in the original post. 

This means Hendricks has 23½ total blocks, 7 punts, and 15½ placekicks with four of those being extra point attempts and 11½ field goals.

As for the punts that were deflected, for lack of a better word, that twenty for one yard they surely should count. It seems wrong that they don't count because it still can be a huge play and two yards should not make a difference. It's a gain of about 35-40 yards that would not have otherwise been realized. The way blocked punts are scored differently than deflected placekicks. 

The way it works is if a player blocks a field goal and it goes past the line of scrimmage that player gets credit for a blocked kick and that is not so for a punt. It's something the league should correct unless there is a compelling reason not to. 

We understand that there may be a good reason for doing it the way the NFL does it, perhaps making the yardages add up or some such thing. It is hard to know but in terms of what happened in the play it does not treat the events similarly, and it likely should. 

Can't a punt be blocked AND the punter gets credit for a 1- or 14-yard punt? Also, note that this type of deflected punt does not count in a punter's blocked kick category either. Of course, that makes sense if you don't count the block but we'd suggest there was no substantial reason to credit both.

We get it, we just think for punt blocks the player should get credit regardless if it ends up a short distance past the yard line where the ball was snapped. That is certainly the way the Packers and Raiders did when they gave Hendricks credit for the one-yarders. 

What possibly happened is that the person tallying tackles, sacks, and so forth wrote the even down one way on the tackle chart and the person typing the text wrote down the other way. 

When team public relations folk look through the gamebooks for defensive statistics they would go to the tackle chart and not the text. That likely is how they have been included all these years, there was no reason to check. That is my guess because I did the same thing, using the tackle chart rather than the text of the play-by-play.

So, with this new information here is a current list of all the blocked punts by Hendricks highlighting the plays that are not technically blocked punts for those interested —

Again, I am grateful that these issues were raised by the writer. Now the more accurate total is known and that could be the silver (and black) lining to my error. It caused further research to get to the bottom of the questions and correct them. 

Oh well, live and learn and be better the next time.

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Newspaper accounts of players in the NFL's first few decades show something different but that is a story for a different day. Based on the available information, Albert Lewis is the top punt blocker as far back as play-by-records go. He had ten. 

He also had two deflections, the same as Hendricks but his total in the original post did not include them.  In Lewis's case, both tackle charts and play-by-play text differentiated between blocks and deflections. 

In addition, Lewis tackled a punter who tried to run rather than get a kick blocked and he also had a block in the playoffs. Though not a block it for all intents and purposes accomplishes the same thing—causing the punting team to lose significant yardage.

Essentially, the miscalculations were not counting deflections for Lewis and counting them for Hendricks, not using the same standard for both. The net effect was that the all-time leader wasn't clear and caused confusion for the aforementioned writer. 

For comparison, here are the Lewis punt blocks and again highlighting the plays that are not counted in semi-official records and the total does not include an interception by Lewis on a fake punt in Week 1, 1987—