When the St. Louis Rams come to town to play the Seahawks, it will be another homecoming of sorts for their punter, Johnny Hekker, the former Bothell High quarterback Johnny Hekker, who led the Cougars to a state championship game appearance in 2007.
Because of Hekker’s ties to the area, and because he has a history torching the Seahawks with trick plays, the local media made the unusual request to ask for Hekker as this week’s opposing player conference call—generally a quarterback or other star player is on the call. The Rams’ media relations director even Tweeted about the request because it was such an oddity, and Rams coach Jeff Fisher ended his conference call by saying, “I appreciate you guys giving my punter an opportunity to talk.”
Well it turns out that having Hekker on the conference call was a good decision, because he was pretty entertaining, from opening with a Marshawn Lynch impersonation to quoting the movie “The Waterboy” to talking about the fakes his team has run against the Seahawks an other teams.
Right off the bat, Hekker responded to the first question with, “Man, thanks for asking,” which was a nod to Lynch’s postgame press conference in Arizona.
Asked if he’d done one of these calls before, Hekker said. “No, I have not, this is my first actually. I’m pretty excited about it.”
Hekker said he’s also excited about playing in front of family and friends at CenturyLink Field, estimating he’ll have 20-plus friends and relatives in attendance: “It’s very exciting. I grew up loving watching the Seahawks. When I do get to come home, it’s just a special feeling knowing I get to play in front of a lot of friends, and of course my big family is all going to be there watching in the stands. That just puts a little bit of extra motivation out there for me.”
On beating Seattle earlier this season, thanks in large part to two trick plays, one of them a pass by Hekker, he said, “We just had a good game plan and were able to execute in a couple of key situations that gave us the edge. It’s very difficult to play against a team like the Seahawks, especially on the road. We’re going to have to do better than we did at home. We’re dealing with a red-hot team that’s really good at playing well this time of year, so we’ve got to bring our A-game to Seattle. Special teams has to be a positive spark for our team and only impact the game in positive ways.”
On that crazy punt return St. Louis scored on, which saw the Rams set up their blocking as if the punt was going right, then have one of their blockers run to the left to catch the ball, Hekker said, “It was either going to work well or we were going to look foolish for even trying it …It was a play we had seen, and you see Jon Ryan’s punt chart, and 99.9 percent of his balls are going to the same spot, so we said, ‘you know, let’s give this thing a shot, and our guys executed well.’”
On having a coach that calls trick plays, “It’s very fun, but it’s also, to whom much is given, much is expected, so we’ve got to make sure we’re always ready and do our best when we do have those fake opportunities just to make sure we know what we’re doing. We practice it enough that we are ready to go on Sundays. Being able to play for a coach that does like to throw that kind of stuff in quite frequently is kind of fun. Throwing the players a bone who sometimes don’t get recognized gives them a little bit of an opportunity to get some attention out there.”
On his success as a passer—in his career Hekker is 5 for 6 for 79 yards, including an 18-yarder on fake punt this year and a 2-yard touchdown on fake field goal in 2012—the former quarterback said, “I guess I just channel by inner Bothell Cougar. Shout out to them and Coach (Tom) Bainter for winning the first state championship, super proud of those guys. But really, I don’t think too much about it. The more I think about it, the higher the likelihood I would short-arm it or throw one right in the dirt, so I have to just go out there and be relaxed about it.”
Asked if he was surprised about the fake punt in the last game considering the Rams were backed up inside their own 20 and clinging to a small lead, Hekker said he didn’t know it was coming until he went onto the field.
“I had no idea we were running it until I was running onto the field actually,” he said. “I was on the sideline warming up thinking, ‘OK, we’re backed up, their offense is rolling, we’ve really got to get a big punt, kind of pin them back.’ Then I’m running onto the field and I hear the fake call and I’m like, ‘holy cow, here we go.’ It was the kind of thing where I’m glad I didn’t have too much time to really think about it. It ended up working out, it was a great call by Coach Fisher. It was a play we had run a ton in practice and just had yet to get the look in the game. We had the right look and we were able to run it to perfection.”
When a reporter suggested that Hekker must have been great at punt, pass and kick competitions as a kid, he said, “I was not, actually. I never participated in one of those… Looking back, if they had an adult league, I’d for sure want to sign up. But my day job is pretty good.”
That day job now pays pretty well too after he signed a six-year contract extension worth $18 million earlier this season. When the Rams announced that deal, the did so with a headline that read, “Punters Get Paid Like People, Too.”
“It’s a huge honor to know that I’m going to be a Ram for the next six years,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing where you look at it and, I’m still pinching myself to this day looking over the numbers and stuff.”
That contract and Hekker’s success suggest he made a very good decision to go to Oregon State to be a punter rather than pursue his quarterback options, which he said included Southern Utah, which was a brand new program, Western Washington, which was about to fold its program unbeknownst to him, and Central Washington.”
Finally, when asked if the Rams are embracing the role of spoiler this week, he said, “In the great words of the announcers in “The Waterboy” it’s the last game of the year; can’t hold anything back now. So we’re just excited, we’re all professionals, and getting to play football is an immense honor, so whenever you have an opportunity to go out on the field and represent your team and represent the city of St. Louis, it means a lot to us. We take a lot of pride in that, so no matter if it was our first game of the season, middle of the season or our last game or the Super Bowl, we’re going to go out there and give it our best effort. We don’t have anything to gain as far as prolonging our season, but we have a lot to gain as far as momentum into next season if we can sneak out of CenturyLink with a win.”
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