Braden
Mann.
Braden
Mann.
Texas A&M· 5'11"· 198 lb· 4.83s 40
"The Ray Guy winner who averaged 51 yards a punt over a full SEC season, Mann is the rare specialist whose leg is loud enough to make a team spend a real draft pick instead of signing a free agent."Pre-draft read
A two-step operator with a compact approach and exceptional leg speed through the ball. His strike produces both distance and hang, and the boomer punt is the headline: he flipped field position all season in the SEC and hit 60-plus yards on a regular basis. Operation time is clean, which matters for a punter who takes a full swing.
The secondary trait is directional and situational control. He can angle the ball to the sideline inside the 50 and drop it short of the goal line rather than blasting everything, and his hang time gives a coverage unit time to arrive. He also handled kickoffs, driving the ball deep with usable hang. The separating trait is the ceiling of the leg: his gross average sits in a range almost no punter in college football can reach.
Field-position special-teams operation that wants a plus-leg punter to flip the field and to hold for the placekicker.
Year 1: the starting punter and holder from the opening game. Ceiling: a top-five gross and net punter on a contender with an elite coverage unit.
A team with a weak coverage unit that measures its punter purely on net average, where his booming distance produces returns instead of field position.
His numbers are only as good as the eleven gunners and coverage players running under them.
Braden Mann, Texas A&M Punter, Puts on a Punting Clinic
Full reel of his Ray Guy season strikes, distance and hang from the SEC.
Spring Report: Braden Mann
Program feature showing his operation, approach and leg speed up close.
Meet The Fleet: Braden Mann
Team introduction after the Jets spent pick 191 on him as their starting punter.
Mann is the exception to the rule that punters do not warrant draft capital. He arrived at Texas A&M as a kickoff specialist, took over the punting job as a junior and immediately produced one of the best punting seasons in college football history. The projection is a Day 1 starting punter with elite gross-average ceiling and enough situational control to trust inside the 50.
The 2018 season is the case: 50 punts for 2,549 yards, a 51.0 average that led the country, the Ray Guy Award, unanimous All-American honors and SEC Special Teams Player of the Year. He followed it as a senior captain with 57 punts for 2,686 yards at 47.1, adding All-SEC first-team and Sports Illustrated All-America recognition. Across four seasons he punted 109 times for 5,329 yards, a 48.9 career average, with multiple 60-plus-yard punts every fall.
The flags are the ones every punter carries. The senior-year average fell almost four yards from the record season, which raised the question of whether 2018 was a career outlier or a baseline; net average depends on a coverage unit he does not control; and at 5-11 and 198 pounds he is small for the position. Teams generally wait for undrafted punters, so the Jets spending pick 191 was itself the statement: they believed the leg was a difference-maker.
- 01
Record-setting leg
His 51.0 average in 2018 led all of college football and won the Ray Guy Award, the clearest evidence of a top-tier NFL leg.
- 02
Hang time with distance
He gets both on the same strike, which is what turns a long punt into an actual field-position win instead of a return.
- 03
Directional control
He angles punts to the sideline inside the 50 and takes something off to avoid the end zone rather than blasting every ball.
- 04
Kickoff value
He handled kickoffs at Texas A&M with averages in the mid-60s, giving a roster two specialist jobs from one player.
- 05
Captain and big-stage résumé
A senior captain who punted every week in the SEC, including against Alabama, LSU, Georgia and Auburn.
- 01
Senior-year regression
His average dropped from 51.0 to 47.1 as a senior, which leaves open whether the record season was repeatable.
- 02
Slight frame
At 5-11 and 198 pounds he is undersized for the position and carries the durability questions that come with it.
- 03
One dominant season
He did not punt at all in 2017 and only twice in 2016, so the full body of work is two years long.
- 04
Positional value
Even an excellent punter returns limited value on a roster, and spending a pick rather than signing a free agent is the risk itself.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.83sp50
- Vertical
- 31inp50
- Broad jump
- 111inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.03sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.13sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Punts | Yds | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Texas A&M | 13 | 2 | 94 | 47 |
| 2017 | Texas A&M | 13 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | Texas A&M | 13 | 50 | 2549 | 51 |
| 2019 | Texas A&M | 13 | 57 | 2686 | 47.1 |
| Career | — | 52 | 109 | 5329 | 48.9 |
Four seasons at Texas A&M, 2016-2019, bowl games included. Season punt totals sum exactly to the career line of 109 punts for 5,329 yards across 52 games. He served as the kickoff specialist in 2016 and 2017 and did not punt at all in 2017, so no average is listed for that year. Inside-20 and hang-time splits by season were not published and are not listed.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Drafted punter with a rare leg who holds the same starting job for years at an above-average level.
Big-leg punter with directional touch who becomes a weapon and an All-Pro for a decade.
Serviceable NFL punter whose numbers never separate him and who gets replaced by the next camp leg.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
New York installed him as the starter immediately. He punted 82 times for a 43.9 average as a rookie in 2020, then 41 times at 45.7 in an injury-shortened 2021 and 83 times at 46.9 in 2022, with a 72-yard long. Across three Jets seasons he punted 206 times for 9,362 yards behind coverage units that gave back a lot of it. Philadelphia signed him in 2023 and the numbers jumped: he set Eagles single-season franchise records in both gross (49.8) and net (43.9) average, punted through the Super Bowl LIX-winning 2024 campaign while holding for Jake Elliott, and followed with 72 punts at 49.9 in 2025.
In hindsight the Jets were right about the leg and wrong about very little. The pre-draft worry that 2018 was an outlier proved unfounded; his gross average climbed every year of his career and he became one of the league's better punters once he landed on a team with a competent coverage unit. For a sixth-round pick this is an unambiguous hit: a Super Bowl champion, a franchise record holder and a starter at the same job for seven straight seasons. The only fair criticism is that his early Jets net averages were ordinary, and that is mostly a story about the eleven players in front of him.