Matt
Araiza.
Matt
Araiza.
San Diego St.· 6'1"· 200 lb· 4.68s 40
Araiza is a 6-foot-1 1/8, 200-pound punter whose leg is the entire evaluation. He averaged 51.19 yards per punt as a junior, the highest single-season figure in NCAA history, and the hang time comes with the distance rather than instead of it.
He is also a genuine athlete for the position — a 4.68 forty and a 32-inch vertical, with a background as a hurdler and a soccer player. The kicking history matters too: he made 50 career field goals and 96 of 97 extra points, so he can handle placekicking in an emergency and he handled kickoffs with an 84.9 percent touchback rate as a junior. The questions are directional control and consistency, since a leg that big can outkick coverage, and a sample of only 84 college punts.
A special teams unit that wants a flipped field on every punt and can live with the occasional touchback, pairing him with a coverage team fast enough to run under his hang time.
Year 1: starting punter and kickoff specialist. Ceiling: top-five NFL punter who also removes the kickoff return from the opponent's game plan.
A team that wants a directional pooch punter to die the ball inside the ten on short fields, where raw distance is a liability.
Three special teams jobs in one roster spot is real value.
Matt Araiza - Best Punter in College Football
His record-setting 2021 punting season at San Diego State.
Matt Araiza Wins 2021 Ray Guy Award
School footage from the night he was named the nation's top punter.
The Best Player in College Football is a Punter
Breakdown of the leg that produced a 51.19-yard NCAA record average.
Araiza grew up in San Diego and attended Rancho Bernardo High School, where he played soccer, ran hurdles and made 37 field goals as a two-time All-America placekicker. He stayed home for San Diego State, choosing the Aztecs over UMass and Montana, and redshirted behind All-Mountain West kicker John Baron II.
He started out as a kicker, not a punter. As a redshirt freshman in 2019 he made a school-record 22 field goals on 26 attempts with 28 extra points in thirteen games. The COVID-shortened 2020 season brought ten field goals on fourteen attempts, and he took over punting duties in the opener against UNLV, averaging 49.8 yards on five punts.
The junior year was one of the best special teams seasons ever played. Handling punts, field goals and kickoffs across fourteen games, he punted 79 times for 4,044 yards and an NCAA-record 51.19-yard average, breaking Braden Mann's 2018 mark, while making eighteen field goals and all 45 extra points. Fans nicknamed him the Punt God. He won the Ray Guy Award and became a unanimous All-American. Buffalo took him 180th overall, the third punter off the board.
- 01
Leg power
a 51.19-yard average as a junior, the highest single-season punting figure in NCAA history and the reason he was drafted.
- 02
Two-way specialist value
made 50 career field goals and 96 of 97 extra points, so he covers placekicking duties in an emergency.
- 03
Kickoff ability
73 kickoffs for an 84.9 percent touchback rate as a junior, a third special teams job he handled at a high level.
- 04
Athleticism
a 4.68 forty and 32-inch vertical for a punter, with a hurdling and soccer background behind the leg speed.
- 05
Peak honors
Ray Guy Award winner and unanimous All-American in 2021, the highest recognition available at the position.
- 01
Sample size
only 84 college punts across three seasons, since he spent most of his career as the placekicker instead.
- 02
Directional control
the raw distance can outkick coverage, and pinning opponents inside the twenty demands precision over power.
- 03
Field goal accuracy
73.5 percent for his career and just 64.3 percent as a junior, so the kicking half of the profile is unreliable.
- 04
Off-field circumstances
a civil lawsuit filed the summer after the draft, which cost him two full NFL seasons regardless of outcome.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.68sp50
- Vertical
- 32inp50
- Broad jump
- 121inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Punts | Yds | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | San Diego State | 13 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | San Diego State | 8 | 5 | 249 | 49.8 |
| 2021 | San Diego State | 14 | 79 | 4044 | 51.2 |
| Career | — | 35 | 84 | 4293 | 51.1 |
Lines come from the Sports-Reference kicking and punting table with bowl games included in 2019 and 2021, and they sum exactly to the career row: 84 punts for 4,293 yards, 50 field goals on 68 attempts and 96 extra points on 97 tries across 35 games. cfbstats independently confirms the 2020 and 2021 seasons. He redshirted in 2018 and that year is not listed. The 2019 punting zeros are verified — he was strictly the placekicker that season and did not punt, which is why no average is shown for that year. He also handled kickoffs, with 73 for a 84.9 percent touchback rate in 2021, a category not carried in this table.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Record-setting college punter who settles in as a solid, employed NFL starter without dominating.
Big-legged punter who turns distance into All-Pro recognition and a long run as a starter.
Huge-average punter whose net numbers and consistency keep the job constantly under review.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
The football part went as scripted and then stopped. Buffalo named him the starting punter as a rookie and released veteran Matt Haack to clear the job. He never played a regular season snap: a civil lawsuit accusing him and two former San Diego State teammates became public on August 25, 2022, and the Bills released him two days later. The San Diego County District Attorney declined to file charges, stating the evidence did not support them and that a witness placed him as having left the party before the alleged events. On December 12, 2023, he and the accuser mutually dropped their suits with no money changing hands and no admission of wrongdoing.
Kansas City signed him on February 22, 2024, two years after the draft. He punted 62 times for a 48.8-yard average with 25 punts inside the twenty as a rookie, was named a Pro Bowl alternate, and set a Super Bowl record in Super Bowl LIX by averaging 51.8 yards on six punts. He repeated with 56 punts and 25 inside the twenty in 2025 and re-signed with the Chiefs on April 20, 2026. Two lost seasons and he is still a starting NFL punter.