Replacing Dustin Colquitt won’t be easy, so the Kansas City Chiefs plan to have a “true competition” to replace him as the new punter.
The next punter for the Kansas City Chiefs has not yet been identified. The only thing that is known is that he will have big shoes to fill in Dustin Colquitt’s absence, a player who special teams coach Dave Toub recently named the “best punter” he’s ever coached.
The Chiefs currently have two punters on the offseason 90-man roster: Tyler Newsome and Tommy Townsend. Newsome is a year out his playing days at Notre Dame and Tommy Townsend was just signed after going undrafted after wrapping up his career at the University of Florida. There are things to like about both punters, per Toub, but he said the Chiefs would employ a “true competition” to make their decision once the preseason begins—however that looks.
"“It is going to be a true competition,” said Toub. “There’s nobody really out in front right now,” said Toub. “I’ve looked at it. I like them both. They’ve both got really strong legs, really powerful legs. They consistenly hit over 5.0 hang times, which is real impressive.“Tommy’s a little bit more clean in his technique as far as consistency whereas Tyler’s a little bit more erratic with his technique, but the results are the same. We just need to clean Tyler up a little bit more. But I’ll tell you what, it’s going to be fun. Competition is going to be real fun.”"
Toub spoke with reporters on Wednesday and gave further insight into Townsend as the newest signing. “The kid’s got a lot of talent,” he said. “We really liked him coming out. I had him rated as the best punter coming out this year, and he was available for us and those guys got it done to get him.”
The Chiefs also grabbed the highest-rated punter from Toub coming out of last year’s draft in Jack Fox, but Colquitt ended up staving off any real competition to stay for his 15th year with the Chiefs. Fox went on to sign with the Detroit Lions.
Townsend was Florida’s punter for two seasons and averaged 44.8 yards/punt average in that span. Newsome comes with nearly 2.5 times the experience punting as a four year starter (225 punts to only 93 for Townsend) and averaged 44 yards/punt along the way.