Like any player entering his second full season in the NFL, Brad Wing reflects on his 2014 performance. In an interview with Steelers.com’s Teresa Varley, he circles back to one word: consistency.
“I want to be more consistent from a punting standpoint. I want to have less bad punts. Hopefully we can be sitting here in a year’s time and I can say I had less bad ones. I just want to perform better,” he told Varley.
Wing concedes the mental aspect of the position is crucial and a short-term memory is vital when you only get an opportunity a handful of times per game.
“A lot of times you hear with specialists it gets in their heads. You have to be sure even when you don’t hit a good ball that you can’t let one punt define you. That has been the toughest thing, dealing with the negatives, the not so good punts, and remaining confident in your abilities.”
Wing will be dealing with one component in 2015 that he didn’t last year – competition. Wing wound up being the only punter in training camp after Adam Podlesh stayed at home due to his wife’s difficult pregnancy. Jordan Berry, a fellow Australian, will serve as the #2 punter coming into Latrobe.
Though Mike Tomlin stuck with Wing all of 2014, recent history shows it’s a position the team isn’t afraid to shake up. That could even mean a Week One punter not currently on the roster, as was the case in 2013 when the team signed Zoltan Mesko over Brian Moorman and Drew Butler.
