There is one punter in the NFL Hall of Fame. It is Ray Guy, who spent his entire career with the (then) Oakland Raiders from 1973-1986. He was First-Team All-Pro six of those seasons, and second team in two other years. Still, he didn’t enter Canton until 28 years after his retirement, via the Senior Committee.
Does that give you a sense of how punters have been traditionally viewed in the NFL?
Fourteen years after Guy retired, the Raiders drafted another punter, Shane Lechler. If anything, Lechler’s career was better than Guy’s. In my opinion, he is the greatest punter in NFL history. Yet you scarcely hear his name mentioned when discussing the Hall of Fame.
And this raises a roster-building question. If punters are held in such obvious disrespect, is there any justification in paying them big salaries? Or, to make it more specific to the Seattle Seahawks….
Why did the Seattle Seahawks just make Michael Dickson the highest-paid punter in the NFL?
I love Michael Dickson. I’m glad he’s on the team. But he’ll carry a cap hit of over four million dollars this season. The average punter's salary is about half that.
Dickson’s cap hit makes him the 14th-highest-paid player on the Seahawks in 2025. He earns more than a lot of higher-profile players because many of them are still playing under their rookie contracts. John Schneider will have to make some tough calls on who to extend in the next year or two.
Would the roughly two million dollars he could free up by finding a younger, cheaper punter be worth letting a genuine talent like Dickson walk?
On the surface, maybe not. But this could change, and that change could happen quickly.
Back to Shane Lechler for a moment – there’s an interesting thing about his career. During his first three seasons, the Raiders were good. After that, they were not. They bordered on terrible for much of his time in Oakland. When Lechler was at his peak – three straight First-Team All-Pro seasons from 2008-2010, the Raiders went 18-30.
There have certainly been exceptions to this throughout NFL history, but this is generally true. Bad teams invest in good punters. This is particularly true if the team is bad primarily due to an ineffective offense. It makes sense. If you don’t think your offense can move the ball consistently, you want a good punter to try and maintain a field position advantage.
Of course, every coach wants good field position. But teams that trust their offenses don’t worry about it all that much. When Patrick Mahomes is on fire, it doesn’t matter if he’s starting at midfield or at his own ten. He’s probably going to score. So the smart move is to save some money on a punter and buy Mahomes one more offensive weapon.
That is the thinking that went into Kansas City’s decision to let Tommy Townsend leave for Houston after the 2023 season. Townsend is a very good punter. The Chiefs had him on a team-friendly deal for the first several years of his career. They rewarded him for one year with a big contract in 2023, but then decided to save some money.
Houston offered Townsend $3 million per year. Kansas City picked up Matt Araiza for less than one million.
In general, the best and highest-salaried punters continue to be on below-average teams. In recent years, punters like Detroit’s Jack Fox and Washington’s Tress Way have been at or near the top of the league. Both those teams are very good now.
But neither was especially good when they first started paying those players big money. It will be interesting to see if Brad Holmes and Adam Peters continue to see the value in paying above-market for punters, even for very good punters.
Now, back to the Seahawks. Michael Dickson has some institutional value that transcends mere performance. And I don’t think the equation is as simple as “Good offense, bad punter – bad offense, good punter.”
But I do think there is something a little less cut-and-dried but still important in Schneider’s recent decision on Dickson. The Seahawks are instituting a new offense this year. New OC. New QB. New WRs. No one really knows how it will work out – or how quickly everything will begin to click.
If you have any doubts about whether your offense will be dynamic in 2025, it makes all the sense in the world to build your team on a strong defense, which Seattle should have.
And on a quality punter, which they have now secured as well.
But one thing to keep in mind as we watch how it all plays out. If the Seahawks’ offense arrives ahead of schedule – if they become this year’s Commanders or Broncos – then it’s conceivable that heading into 2026, John Schneider may take another look at the punter position. Dickson is inked through 2029, but there is no guarantee that he stays that long.
The good news is that if it does come to pass that Michael Dickson does not serve the full four years of his new contract in Seattle, it will probably not be because his skills have diminished. It will more likely be because Seattle has improved to the point where they no longer deem it necessary to have an elite punter.
