Jordan
Stout.
Jordan
Stout.
Penn St.· 6'3"· 209 lb· 4.65s 40
"The biggest leg in the class arrived with a franchise-record 57-yard field goal, 59 touchbacks and exactly one season of full-time punting, and the whole bet was whether power could be taught restraint."Pre-draft read
Stout is a power leg first and a placement punter second. His operation is quick, his drop is consistent, and he generates the kind of gross average that flips a field on one swing. Penn State also used him as a kickoff specialist and a long-range field goal kicker, which is unusual for a draftable punter and speaks to the raw leg strength behind the profile.
The directional and hang-time work is where he was still developing. He can drive a ball 55 yards and outkick his coverage, and the pooch and sideline placement that separates NFL punters from college legs was inconsistent on tape. As a holder he was clean. The projection was simple: elite raw power that needs an NFL special teams coach to teach it restraint.
A special teams unit that values field position over return suppression and can build a coverage team fast enough to run under a big leg.
Year 1: immediate starting punter and kickoff option. Ceiling: a top-three punter by net average who also removes returns from the kickoff phase.
A team with a slow coverage unit that needs directional, hang-time-first punting inside the 40, where his power becomes return yardage rather than field position.
His value is highest on a roster that can use the kickoff leg too, turning one spot into two phases of production.
Jordan Stout 69 YARD PUNT | Ravens vs Browns
The franchise rookie-record 69-yard punt, the clearest single look at his raw leg.
NFL Punting Prospects | 2022 NFL Combine & Draft Training
Pre-draft training tape showing his drop, operation time and swing mechanics alongside class peers.
Stout was the most physically gifted specialist in the 2022 class. He started at Virginia Tech as a kickoff weapon, transferred to Penn State, and spent his first two years there handling long field goals and kickoffs before taking over full punting duties. In 2021 he did everything at once: 67 punts at better than 46 yards a boot, 16 field goals including a 52-yarder, 34 extra points, and 65 kickoffs with 59 touchbacks.
That season made him a consensus All-American and the Big Ten Punter of the Year, and it also created the evaluation question. A punter drafted in the fourth round has to be a guaranteed decade-long starter, and Stout's tape showed enormous power with average situational control: outkicked coverage on some boots, hung a few too flat, and had a net average that trailed his gross by a wide margin. The leg was never in doubt; the craft was.
Baltimore, a franchise that treats special teams as a competitive edge and had just built a kicking operation around Justin Tucker, spent pick 130 on him anyway. It was a bet that the strongest leg in the class could be coached into the most complete punter in the league.
- 01
Leg strength
one of the biggest legs in the class, capable of flipping a field on a single swing and comfortably driving punts beyond 55 yards without a hurried operation.
- 02
Multi-phase specialist value
handled punting, kickoffs and long field goals at Penn State, including a program-record 57-yarder, which made him a roster-flexibility asset.
- 03
Kickoff production
put 59 of 65 kickoffs into the end zone for touchbacks as a senior, removing the return game as a variable on nearly every kick.
- 04
Clean, repeatable operation
consistent drop and quick get-off time under pressure, with no blocked punts as a senior despite a heavy 67-punt workload.
- 05
Proven big-stage resume
Big Ten Punter of the Year and consensus All-America honors as a senior in a conference that plays in wind, cold and hostile road stadiums.
- 01
Outkicked his coverage
the raw power sometimes came at the cost of hang time, and his net average trailed his gross by a margin that worried coverage-first coaches.
- 02
Situational placement was inconsistent
the pooch and sideline directional punts inside the 40 were not yet a strength, which is where NFL punters earn their money.
- 03
Only one full season of punting
he did not take over the job until 2021, so the sample of real punting reps was thinner than his draft slot implied.
- 04
Specialist positional value
a fourth-round pick spent on a punter has to become a long-term starter immediately, leaving no margin for a slow developmental curve.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.65sp50
- Vertical
- —in
- Broad jump
- —in
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Punts | Yds | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Virginia Tech | 13 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | Penn State | 13 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | Penn State | 9 | 33 | 1371 | 41.6 |
| 2021 | Penn State | 13 | 67 | 3083 | 46 |
| Career | — | 48 | 100 | 4454 | 44.5 |
The 2020 and 2021 lines come from cfbstats (Penn State team 539, player 1089787), which includes bowl games: 33 punts for 1,371 yards in 2020 and 67 punts for 3,083 yards in 2021. Sports-Reference supplies the 2018 Virginia Tech and 2019 Penn State seasons and the kicking totals. Sports-Reference lists 99 career punts for 4,403 yards because it excludes the 2021 bowl game; the four seasons here sum exactly to the cfbstats-inclusive career line of 100 punts for 4,454 yards, 20 of 32 field goals and 38 of 40 extra points across 48 games. He redshirted in 2017 at Virginia Tech, so that year is omitted rather than listed as zeros. His long field goal in 2018 is not published, so it is left blank rather than filled in.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Long-tenured, technically coached punter who leads the league in net through placement rather than raw distance.
All-Pro punter whose leg and situational control turn the punt into an offensive weapon.
Serviceable starter whose gross average never converts into net and who cycles between teams.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
He started all 17 games as a rookie and never gave the job back. Stout punted 57 times for a 45.9 average in 2022, then set a franchise record with a 47.8 gross average in 2023, and by 2024 he had pushed his net to a career-best 41.2 while dropping 22 punts inside the 20. The breakout came in 2025: 53 punts, a 50.1 gross average that ranked third in the NFL, and a 44.9 net average that led the league outright, earning him first-team All-Pro honors and his first Pro Bowl. He signed with the New York Giants in the 2026 offseason and opened the year as their punter.
The exact worry in the scouting report — power without net — is the thing he fixed. His net average climbed in three of his first four seasons and finished first in the league, and he has landed more than 100 punts inside the 20. Fourth-round picks on specialists are almost always indefensible; this one produced an All-Pro who has never missed a game in five seasons. Baltimore read the leg correctly and the coachability better.