14 years into his NFL career, Miami Dolphins punter Thomas Morstead is accustomed to life as a professional football player.
The former SMU Mustang spent 12 seasons as a member of the New Orleans Saints, and his 2021 season was split between the New York Jets and Atlanta Falcons for seven games a piece. Still, last season, at 35 years old, he averaged 47.2 yards and 42 net yards per attempt.
Now, after signing a one-year deal this offseason worth $1.27 million, he’s coming to South Florida to play his home games at Hard Rock Stadium, where he once helped the Saints win a Super Bowl over the Indianapolis Colts as a rookie.
Luckily for both sides, a deal was rather easy to come by.
“I just made it clear what I was wanting to play for, and I don’t think they thought that was the case,” Morstead told me. “I made it clear that I didn’t want the finances to be an impediment to me coming here. I felt like the team has a good shot to have a good team. It’s a nice place to play, and to be a part of a new coaching staff that’s trying to build its identity and culture, I don’t know. There were just a lot of things about it that were exciting to me.”
During his limited time away from the football field, he spends as much time as he can with his family or working out. It’s that physical part of his game that helped him get to this level, and it’s not something he plans on stopping.
“Once I got into a college program four days a week, it kind of shocked my system,” Morstead said. “I guess I never trained like that…The ball started going farther and higher, and it just felt like a direct correlation. So I just keep after it…Obviously, I think it’s been a huge reason for my success.”
In a new system, 14 years into his career, Morstead is still looking at the challenges of the NFL the same way. He’s won a Super Bowl, been named a Second-team All-Pro and played in a Pro Bowl. What more is there to do as a professional punter?
“Well [all of that] was like in my first for years,” he said. “I just love being part of it. We get very well compensated to play a kid’s game, and I just love doing all the aspects of what it takes to be great. It’s an awesome opportunity for me to demonstrate professional excellence for my kids. Their old enough where they kind of know what’s going on now which is really cool.
“I guess if I just look myself in the mirror one day and just don’t want to do it anymore, if I’m not excited about it, I’ll just have to be honest with myself about that… I love the training and the grind of the season. Being counted on by your teammates and by an organization in big moments, there’s nothing like it… If I feel like I’m better than the average guy in the league and can add value to a team, then I’m excited about that.”
This year’s training camp presents Morstead with a challenge that he’s only taken on twice in the past – compete for his job.
As a rookie in 2009, he was tasked with beating out veteran punter Glenn Pakulak, who had a decent season with the Saints in 2008, and he did just that. Then, it wasn’t until 2020, his final year with New Orleans, that he would battle again, this time with Blake Gillikin. Morstead won that as well, as Gillikin was placed on injured reserve before eventually claiming the job in 2021 after Morstead’s release in March.
This offseason, the Dolphins signed undrafted punter Tommy Heatherly to participate in a camp battle with the veteran for the job. A battle is something that Morstead understands and welcomes, especially at this point in his career, but he doesn’t necessarily view it as a competition.
“I’m not really competing with anybody,” he said. “If Tommy can show that he’s a promising player and show that he can be consistently a good punter, any team’s gonna keep a rookie that shows that because they’re cheap and young, and you can build around that. So, I certainly have to outperform him in almost every way, and that’ll be the case for the rest of my career, and that’s great. I look forward to that challenge. I’m certainly aware of how he’s punting in practice, but, at the end of the day, I know that if I’m doing the things that I’m capable of doing consistently, it doesn’t really matter.
“That’s not a knock on him or anybody else I’ve competed against. It’s just- if I’m doing what I do at the level that I’m capable of and doing that consistently, I’m gonna have a job.”
One conversation that has been brought up recently in the NFL due to Ryan Tannehill’s comments about helping rookie quarterback Malik Willis has been whether or not a veteran should be willing to help a player gunning for their job. And, in the case of Morstead and Heatherly, while they may appear to be fighting for a job, Morstead says he’s always willing to help his teammate.
“Look, I promised myself a long time ago that I would always mentor whoever was around me whether it was another kicker, punter, snapper or young player,” he said. “I just feel like whenever your time’s over to be playing, it’ll be over regardless. Being stingy with what you know and how you go about things is not the way I would do things… Every time, ‘Hey, listen, I’m here for you. If you need anything, I’ll be happy to be as big or little a resource as you want me to be, or not at all if you’re not into that.’ Smart young players, typically, even if they’re trying to kick your butt every day in practice, they’re gonna take as much info in as they can and learn as much as they can.”
When it comes to what Morstead will do on the field at least through training camp, his duties will likely be kept to punting and holding. In the past, he’s kicked off, but he hasn’t done so consistently since 2014. Even when it comes to fakes, that’s not something that’s really been part of his repertoire. He’s willing to try it if they ask him to, but it’s not something he’s asking for.
“Look, whatever coach wants me to do, I’m happy to do,” he said. “I don’t have an ego about it. There’s not part of me that’s like, ‘Man, I really want to run a fake, so I can do something sweet and different.’ I just want to do my job, and if that’s me throwing a football at some point, or running a football at some point, so be it. I’d be excited to do it.”
Morstead actually talked about one poor fake punt attempt back in 2014 against the Dallas Cowboys that the defense needed only 10 men on the field to stop. On fourth-and-9, from their own 40-yard line, Morstead received the snap, faked a hand-off to the right-side gunner, rolled out to the right and was brought down behind the line of scrimmage with the ball still in his possession.
“Well, if I’m gonna be honest with you I didn’t want to run that one,” he said. “We didn’t have a check out of it. We were down 14 points with 7.5 minutes left in the game. Coach [Sean] Payton actually apologized to me on the sideline after we made that call because it just was not the right time for it, obviously.”
Now, in Miami, just as he had during his stops in New Orleans, New York and Atlanta, Mostead is focused on doing whatever he can to help the team succeed. That’s one of many commendable aspects of his personality that will make watching him battle for his job this summer pretty entertaining, even if he doesn’t view it as a competition.
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