Monday, July 27, 1998

Dallas coach gets a kick out of discovering new talent

By NICK GHOLSON

Scripps Howard News Service

WICHITA FALLS, Texas -- As an NFL player, Steve Hoffman was 0-for-4.

Four training camps, four "sorry, see-ya-laters." Nobody in the league had room on their roster for the punter from little Dickinson College. But things worked out well for Hoffman. The breaks went his way, and today, at age 39, he is probably the best kicking coach in all of pro football.

There's plenty of evidence to back up that statement:

Exhibit A: Chris Boniol.

Exhibit B: Richie Cunningham.

Exhibit C: The Dallas Cowboys, four place-kickers over the past five years, have connected on 164 of 188 field goal attempts, a success rate of 87.2 percent.

All that for a team not known for leaving much room in the budget for guys who make a living with their feet.

"It's challenging, and it's stressful and lot of pressure because Jerry (Jones) just basically throws it in my lap now and says 'Hey, we can't keep Chris Boniol. Go find a guy. You can't give him a bonus. You can do this. You can't do that. He has to be a rookie. He has to be minimum wage,' " Hoffman said. "So you can't battle for the top kickers in the country, you can't battle for free agent veterans, you can't get veterans off the street because they're fifth-year veteran minimums instead of first-years."

Even with those restrictions, the Cowboys every year always seem to have one of the most dependable kickers in the country -- all thanks to Hoffman, who has built such a reputation that every guy in the country who thinks he can make it in the NFL is sending him video tapes.

"I don't think you can just go out there and take guys off the street and develop them into a professional kicker. You've got to find a guy who has the leg strength and the natural ability to do it, plus I have to know that I can work with what he has," Hoffman explained. "I have certain beliefs on what kickers and punters should be doing, and some guys, their current form doesn't match that at all.

"I don't know if my way is the right way to do it, but it's what I believe in. So I have to find guys who fit that mold. The rest of it is to find guys who can handle it mentally, and that's the hardest part. You can find 20 kickers that have the physical tools, but they just might not have it upstairs, so you have to eliminate them right off the bat."

Hoffman has only had to find two punters in his 10 seasons with the Cowboys, but he has had to come up with six place-kickers. Often, that's his job in training camp, but in 1993 he switched horses in midstream. Lin Elliot, who had kicked for Dallas in Super Bowl XXVII, was replaced by veteran Eddie Murray after the Emmitt Smith-less Cowboys started the 1993 season 0-2.

"Lin got into a little bit of a slump, and we didn't have the luxury of letting him get out of a slump. Jimmy (Johnson) didn't want to cut Lin, but we talked him into it because he was down and we couldn't let him cost us another game or we would be in deep trouble," Hoffman said.

Good choice. Murray was a solid 28-for-33, and the Cowboys won a second straight Super Bowl. By next summer, though, the Eagles had bought Murray, and Hoffman was faced with choosing between two raw rookies from small Louisiana colleges --Boniol and Cunningham. Boniol eventually won the job, although Hoffman says Cunningham might have been the better kicker.

"We alternated them in the preseason, and Richie's first attempt was 49 yards and he missed by about a foot. Chris made a 24-yarder on his first attempt. Richie's second one was about a 50-yarder, and he hit the upright. Chris made a 37-yarder," the coach recalled. "On Richie's third try, in the mud in Mexico City, he tried a 40-yarder and fell on his butt. Chris didn't get any attempts in that game and then the next week made about a 45-yarder in the dome. So Chris was 3-for-3, and Richie was 0-for-3. I still thought Richie was a little bit better, but I would have had a hard time arguing for him."

Boniol had three solid seasons with the Cowboys. Once again the Eagles came around and lured him away from Dallas with big bucks. Lucky for Hoffman, Cunningham was still available last year. And, with a 34-for-37 field goal season, he proved what the coach had thought about him four years earlier. He was better than Boniol.

Hoffman, who is now in the business of giving other people breaks, received his big break from Jimmy Johnson. While working with kicking camps, Hoffman met Johnson when he was the head coach at Oklahoma State. They were reunited a few years later when Hoffman was a graduate student and Johnson was the head coach at the University of Miami. The Hurricanes didn't have a punter that year, and Hoffman found them Jeff Feagles, then a junior college kid, at a kicking camp he was working.

That landed him a graduate's assistant job at Miami for two years. Then when Johnson got the job with the Cowboys, he called on Hoffman, who was then a high school teacher. Some thought Hoffman might follow Johnson to the Miami Dolphins, but he said he was never asked.

"In all honesty, though, I wouldn't have wanted to go. I love Dallas, and Jerry has been great to us," he said. "I'm not stupid. Coaching kickers and punters, a lot of the success we've had is because we play in Texas Stadium, and if you want to make a name for yourself in the unique position I'm in, you're better off with the Dallas Cowboys than with the Miami Dolphins or the Seattle Seahawks.

"I appreciate what Jimmy did for me, but I have a philosophy of being loyal to the guy who signs your paycheck and has been loyal to you."

The paycheck, however, is not the real reward for a kicking coach, Hoffman said. "You get to give a kid like (punter) Toby Gowin a chance to start his life. It may sound silly, but he's a great kid who just got married. He's putting money in the bank, he's having fun, he's living a dream. And two years from now, he'll probably sign a big contract somewhere."

And when that time comes, Hoffman will go out and find someone as good, and maybe better, to take his place in Dallas. He always does. (Nick Gholson writes for the Wichita Falls Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas)