Ethan
Evans.
Ethan
Evans.
Wingate
"The Division II cannon with real kickoff value — the rare punter worth an actual draft pick, the highest-drafted specialist of 2023 and the first D-II player off the board at No. 223."Pre-draft read
Evans is a big-bodied left-footed punter — 6-3, 231 pounds — who played four seasons as Wingate's starting punter and kickoff specialist, adding placekicking duties as a senior. His calling card is raw leg strength: he gets NFL distance on his "A" ball with easy acceleration through contact, and he owns a legitimate kickoff leg (62.4-yard average, 44 touchbacks as a senior).
The second trait is field-flipping consistency from a small-school stage: 30 punts of 50-plus yards and 39 downed inside the 20 in 2022 alone. The trade-offs are refinement — his directional punting and touch-to-power balance were still developing, and his get-off times needed tightening against NFL rush speed. But the ceiling of the leg was never the question.
Any pro punt scheme — his leg strength and improving directional control fit both power and placement approaches; doubles as kickoff specialist
Year 1: starting punter and kickoff man; ceiling: decade-long franchise specialist with Pro Bowl upside
A roster carrying separate punters and kickoff specialists with no appetite for a rookie learning NFL rush speed
His 44-touchback senior kickoff season made him effectively two roster spots in one.
Ethan Evans Senior Season Highlights
The Rams' official reel of Evans' All-America senior season at Wingate.
The Strongest Punter Ever? Ethan Evans Draft Profile
Pre-draft breakdown of Evans' leg strength and D-II dominance.
Ethan Evans' Elite Punt vs. Minnesota (2024)
Game clip of a booming field-flipping punt from his second NFL season.
Evans authored one of the great specialist careers in Division II history at Wingate, a four-year starter who punted 186 times for 8,027 yards and handled every kickoff. As a senior he was the best punter in the division: 45.7 yards per punt, 39 inside the 20, 30 of 50-plus, All-America honors from the AP and D2CCA plus first-team All-SAC as both punter and kicker while going 10-of-18 on field goals and 43-of-44 on PATs.
The evaluation is simple and narrow: does the leg translate, and can everything else catch up? The leg answered loudly — scouts who made the trip to Wingate came away calling his best balls NFL-ready on both punts and kickoffs. The concerns were the D-II learning curve, inconsistent directional control, and operation time that had never been stress-tested by real rush speed. His pro day confirmed the frame and the cannon.
The industry treated him as the rare specialist actually worth a draft pick: the consensus top punter in the class. The Rams, transitioning from the Johnny Hekker era, spent pick 223 — making Evans the first Division II player selected in 2023 and only the second Wingate Bulldog ever drafted. For a seventh-rounder, the bet was a decade-long starter at a position teams usually fill off the street.
- 01
Nuclear leg strength
Produces NFL-caliber distance and hang time on his best balls, with 30 punts of 50-plus yards in his senior season alone.
- 02
Coffin-corner volume
Dropped 39 of 77 punts inside the 20-yard line in 2022, more than half his attempts, flipping field position weekly.
- 03
Dual-duty value
Handled punts, kickoffs (62.4-yard average, 44 touchbacks) and placekicking as a senior, giving a roster real flexibility.
- 04
Proven trajectory
Improved his punting average every season at Wingate, from 40.3 as a freshman to 45.7 as a senior against live competition.
- 05
Big-game validation
Earned first-team Division II All-America honors from both the AP and D2CCA, the top of his level by any measure.
- 01
Small-school jump
Faced Division II rush schemes and athletes, leaving his operation time and block avoidance genuinely untested pre-draft.
- 02
Directional inconsistency
Sprayed punts when asked to work the sideline, relying on raw power more than placement craft at Wingate.
- 03
Touch-to-power balance
Outkicked his coverage at times, blasting balls into the end zone when a more measured ball was the right play.
- 04
Get-off speed
His step pattern and punt release ran slow by NFL standards, a fixable but real flag for a seventh-round specialist.
| Yr | Team | G | FGM | FGA | FG% | XPM | XPA | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Wingate | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2020 | Wingate | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2021 | Wingate | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2022 | Wingate | — | 10 | 18 | — | 43 | 44 | — |
| Career | — | 39 | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Punting lines verified against Wingate's official season statistics; season totals sum exactly to his 186-punt, 8,027-yard career. The 2020 season was played in spring 2021 (COVID). He did not attempt field goals until his senior year.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Big-legged punter who turned elite gross average into a long-term starting job.
The man he replaced in Los Angeles — a big-bodied franchise punter who became the standard at the position.
Draftable-leg punter whose consistency never held up against NFL rush speed.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Evans won the Rams' punting job as a rookie and immediately looked like a steal. He finished 2023 tenth in the NFL in gross average at 49.2 yards per punt and earned NFC Special Teams Player of the Week in Week 11, the first Ram to win a weekly award that season. He has held the job ever since: 46.0 yards per punt in 2024, then 46.3 in 2025 with a second NFC weekly award after pinning Seattle inside the 20 four times in a 21-19 win, including one killed at the one-yard line late in the fourth quarter.
Three seasons in, the retrospective is clean: this is one of the best seventh-round picks of the 2023 draft. The Rams got a franchise punter and kickoff specialist — 168 punts, a 47.3 career gross average and a 72-yard long through 2025 — for the 223rd selection. The D-II translation concerns evaporated within a month of camp; the directional refinement came with NFL coaching. When a seventh-round pick becomes a multi-year starter at any position, the process gets an A. Evans made it look obvious.