Spartans seeking 'explosiveness' in punt return game

EAST LANSING – Wanted: Some yardage on punts.

It’s been an ongoing search for Michigan State since Keshawn Martin’s graduation in 2011, a sometimes futile attempt to find one person who can return punts and flip the field in the special teams game.

Andre Sims. Nick Hill. Macgarrett Kings. None of them showed the ability to catch the ball and the vision elude oncoming tacklers as Martin possessed.

“We gotta find a guy,” MSU coach Mark Dantonio said.

It’s an under-the-radar competition to find a special teams play-maker to put back for punt returns this fall. Senior R.J. Shelton is the only one with limited experience there, and teammates such as Donnie Corley, Montae Nicholson, Darrell Stewart and Brandon Sowards are among those gunning for the open role.

“Punt return is pretty fun,” redshirt freshman Stewart said this week. “There’s a lot of explosiveness back there, and there’s a lot of different styles back there.”

Martin finished his college career ranked second with 659 yards on the fourth-most punt returns (65) in school history. He averaged 10.1 yards per return and was a legitimate threat every time he touched the ball, one of just three Spartans to have two career punt return touchdowns.

Now-graduated Kings held the job for the majority of the past two seasons, but he never turned into another Martin in the return game. Last season, MSU averaged just 3.4 yards on Kings’ 10 and Shelton’s three returns. Their longest went for 17 yards. Opponents’ other 51 punts were either fair catches or rolled and were downed by coverage units without a return.

Kings averaged 6.1 yards in 2014 on 20 of the Spartans’ 22 returns. In 2013, Kings averaged 10.3 yards on 20 returns and since-transferred Sims 8.6 on 15 attempts, but catching the ball consistently proved problematic.

The year after Martin’s graduation, the Spartans got so desperate that they put feature running back Le’Veon Bell back to receive punts in place of Sims and Hill. MSU averaged just 9.0 yards on 23 returns of 86 opponents’ punts in 2012.

Shelton has shown the ability to break big returns in the kickoff game, including a 90-yard touchdown against Penn State in 2014. But his three punt returns netted just 6 yards last season.

“R.J. Shelton has been back there in the past, so he has game experience at that,” Dantonio said. “These other guys, I think we’re gonna see what they got.”