How Maurice Brown II knew he was 'going to get it' and block a punt last Saturday
He knew it was coming. With the way he had worked on it at practice and the game plan put into place, he had that feeling it was going to happen.
While he hasn’t seen a snap at tight end yet this year, Maurice Brown II has been a fixture on special teams. He’s the “pursuit guy” on punt return, which means he goes in and tries to block punts.
“Oh, I was getting like three to four punt blocks at practice,” Brown said about last week.
Trailing by seven early in the second quarter on Saturday, LSU lined up to punt for a third straight time to open the game. The Tigers lined up with four blockers and the long snapper up front. They were leaving a considerable amount of space open, gaps if you will, for any of South Carolina’s players to come through.
“We knew they were going to block out. And so, I knew I was going to come free,” Brown said. “That was the game plan.”
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With no one blocking him at the line of scrimmage, Brown ran straight forward without any hesitation. The only thing standing between him and the punter were a barricade of three more LSU players.
Not even that was going to stop him, though. As he got closer to the trio of blockers, Brown leaped forward and extended his hands out to block the punt.
“We’ve been practicing it all week and we had repped it a lot, and I was ready to do it,” he said. “… When I lined up and got through free, I knew what I had to do: reach my hand over, block the punt. That was that.”
As Brown knocked the ball free, he got so high into the air that he flipped over the blockers and onto the ground but quickly got back up. The ball rolled free towards the South Carolina sideline until Buddy Mack III scooped it up and went down at the 10-yard line.
One play later, Rocket Sanders scored his first rushing touchdown of the day in what would become an eventual 36-33 loss for the Gamecocks. But there’s no denying how big this play was in the game.
Even after getting the win, LSU head coach Brian Kelly said he planned to speak to the SEC league office about what he believed was an illegal block on that punt. The rule is that a player cannot jump over the punt shield to make a play.
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Brown begs to differ with Kelly’s assessment of the play, believing what he did wasn’t anything rule-breaking.
“Oh, no, it wasn’t at all,” Brown said. “I feel that I lunged forward, and as I was lunging forward, the shield lifted me up and I just happened to flip over. And so, it might have looked like I jumped, but I didn’t jump. I just leaned forward and got flipped by the line.”
Either way, it won’t make much of a difference now. But for Brown, this was a huge moment. He was put on scholarship only days before making the play of his career. He credits it all to his hard work.
“Working hard every practice and visualizing me getting that punt block because we have repped it a lot,” Brown said. “So just every practice, when I’m getting in on my special team reps, just working hard and visualizing how I practice is how I play. So, I was getting the punt blocks in practice. I was like, ‘Oh, yeah. I’m going to get it in the game.’ And when I got in the game, it all worked out and I was excited.”
