Punters don’t get an incredible amount of attention across any level of football, but one player at the position who has stood out is LSU’s Zach Von Rosenberg.
Yes, the 30-year-old one with the interesting takes on Twitter. You’ve probably heard plenty about the former if you’ve ever watched a broadcast of an LSU game.
“It’s annoying, but what am I going to do about it?,” Von Rosenberg said. “They have to have their talking points, and it is what it is.”
Von Rosenberg says he’d rather the announcers focus on other aspects of him and his game, but that it’s something he understands at the same time.
“Obviously, I’m not going to go and tell the CBS and ESPN broadcasters to not bring up my age or whatever,” he said. “It’s a funny part of my career and my journey, and I understand why it gets brought up. But if they watch each other’s broadcast, I would think they’d realize ‘hey, maybe I shouldn’t keep saying this since it gets said at every game.'”
His age has never been an issue for him as far as blending in with the rest of the team, though he’s surrounded by many players who are roughly eight years younger than him.
Von Rosenberg doesn’t come off as significantly older than them, but brings an element of maturity to the locker room that may exceed that of his colleagues.
“All of the specialists will tell you that — that I know how to have fun and I enjoy myself around them, and I know how to be just one of the guys,” he said.
Now that he’s going on the NFL and already has drawn the interest of teams, Von Rosenberg will deal with the age issue in a different way — he’ll be a rookie among more experienced NFL players who are still a good bit younger than him, but he views it positively.
“They won’t have to worry about me,” he said. “That’s not to say anything or target anyone specifically, but some kids are 21, 22, 23, and I don’t want to call them immature, but they don’t have the maturity level that I do. With that being said, I am 30 years old and I just got out of college like everybody else, and I have a different perspective on life than someone who is much younger than me who is also coming out of college.”
Formerly a professional baseball player with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the minors, this won’t be Von Rosenberg’s first appearance at the next level.
He says that going on to the NFL is something he’s always wanted to do, but that he didn’t expect it to be an easy journey.
“I knew it was going to be a long road because of how different my path was and how unique the punting position is,” he said. “Getting back into it, it took me a couple of years… the first goal was just to start at LSU. Now, this year, I have to earn a spot in the NFL.”
Von Rosenberg never doubted his ability, but knows he’s not your typical punter in more ways than one.
“I don’t punt like a lot of other punters,” he said. “I don’t have, I guess, what you would call an orthodox punting style. I’ve tried the traditional way, my mechanics are different from a lot of other guys. Stuff like that came down to me knowing what I’m good at and using my strengths instead of my weaknesses in my punting form, and luckily it worked out for me and helped me to become one of the best punters in our league.”
Punting isn’t all Von Rosenberg has done. In fact, we came much closer than we think to seeing him line up at quarterback last year, before LSU was forced to postpone the Alabama game due to COVID-19 concerns.
“All we had was TJ Finley at practice,” he said. “My chance to play quarterback) never happened because we simply didn’t have enough players to field a team that Saturday.”
The time that he saw in practice preparing to play the position will still serve as a fond memory for everyone, though.
“It was fun, probably the best ten days of practice,” he said. “The guys enjoyed it… I surprised a lot of people because they didn’t realize I was athletic like that. They opened their eyes and I think they realized, ‘wow, this dude can play football, he’s not just a punter. He can move a little bit, he can throw on the run, he can make deep ball throws.'”
Former LSU quarterback Joe Burrow got a good kick out of the whole deal.
“I did text him some video and he laughed, he thought it was funny,” Von Rosenberg said. “He didn’t really give me any advice though, because he knew that ship had sailed.”
Von Rosenberg is right — that ship has indeed sailed. But there’s no denying that he will bring a tremendous amount of talent to an NFL team.
He was a semifinalist for the Ray Guy Award last year, also named to the All- SEC team after his 2020 performance. Von Rosenberg averaged almost 44 yards on 59 punts and pinned his opponents inside the 20-yard line on the 27 occasions.
It will be interesting to see where he lands in April, and it’s without a doubt that he’ll be missed in Baton Rouge as perhaps one of the most unique individuals to ever play the position in college football.
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