If you were a frustrated fan last Saturday when USC’s second punt of the day took a sideways hop to glance off of senior wide receiver Garren Strong, or two weeks before when a short punt bounced off of junior rover Patrick Chung, there is something you can do about it, said Oregon coaches this week.
Be quiet.
Much has been made recently locally and nationally of the noise level at Autzen Stadium and the advantage it gives Oregon at home. But when a punt is in the air and the Ducks are receiving it, the noise can be a big disadvantage.
“The noise level in Autzen on those plays actually works against us a little bit because we need to try to communicate,” said Oregon coach Mike Bellotti.

Communication is key for the blockers on the punt return team, who are often occupied first with blocking their man and can’t see where the ball is going to land.
“The ball takes a crazy hop and all our guys are scattering to get away from it except for one guy who didn’t hear it,” said Oregon special teams coach Tom Osborne. “It’s hard to hear down there … (the punt returner’s) got to be able to communicate to our guys the best he can.
“We’ve had two communication issues where guys can’t hear. You can’t use that as an excuse but at the same time if I can’t hear you talking to me how do I know what you’re saying.”
If you’ve been in Autzen Stadium while a Duck football game is in full swing, you know how hard it can be to hear even the people seated next to you. Imagine what it’s like to try to hear across the width of the field.

“You and I could stand side by side on the sideline and you can’t hear half the time,” said Osborne. “So a guy that’s 10, 12, 15 yards away from the returner doesn’t hear it.”
But while both coaches pointed out the issues the team has with communicating during punt returns due to fan noise, neither would put blame on the fans for what both coaches called “freak” plays.
“They’re both freak things that happen once in a lifetime,” said Bellotti. “They happened twice in the same season this year and that’s frustrating.”
“It’s freakish things that you hope never happen again and we try and fix it every way we can,” Osborne said. “But how the ball bounces in this game is crazy, it’s really crazy.”
Osborne has been coaching for 27 years and said he only remembers a play like this happening to his team once before.
“It happened one time when I was here in 1998 and I’ve never seen it happen again,” he said. “Now it’s happened twice in one year.”
But with short, bouncing punts being the norm in the Pacific-10 Conference this year, this seems likely to remain an issue for Oregon’s punt return unit.
“If you look at our conference right now, there’s nobody in the Pac-10 conference in the top-30 in the nation in punt returns, because nobody can punt the ball,” Osborne said. “But if you look at the top-30 in net punting there’s probably six teams, because you get these short punts that nobody can field.”
Asked what the team can do to avoid this situation in the future Osborne said, laughing, “We could all fall down at the line of scrimmage so the ball doesn’t hit us I guess.”
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