Many football teams look to their quarterback, running back, wide receiver or maybe a player on defense to be their star. It’s an uncommon occurrence when a football team’s best player is on special teams. Right now, Elon football has one of those rare athletes.
Redshirt junior punter Jeff Yurk has been a bright spot for Elon in a position that often goes unnoticed and underappreciated.
Yurk has had a great year so far with 20 50+ yard punts, including a season-long of 72 yards. As of Nov. 1, Yurk led the FCS in yards per punt with 48.9, which is on pace to break the FCS single-season average record. Yurk’s career average is also in the top 20 in FCS history.
Elon football special teams assistant who specializes in kickers and punters, Mike Nall, attributes Yurk’s success to his purpose and process-driven approach.
“Jeff takes a real analytical approach to everything he does,” Nall said. “He's almost like a mad scientist when it comes to diagnosing what he does and getting better at what he does. He looks at every little nuance of the process of punting a football. He's very purpose-driven, I would say, and process-driven. He doesn't come out here and warm up like most punters do, where they just rattle off balls. Every time he punts the ball, he punts it with a purpose.”
Yurk’s life as a punter began all the way back in his freshman year of high school where he abandoned his previous time as a junior varsity quarterback to join the varsity team. Being a kicker and punter was his way in, and it took off from there.
In 2021, he arrived at Elon and started as the team’s punter. During his first two years at Elon, Yurk began to rack up awards and recognition. In 2023, he transferred to the University of Pittsburgh. However, he didn’t stay long and returned to Elon this year, where he has had the best season of his career.
“Elon was really the perfect place for me, and I didn't really realize it my freshman and sophomore year,” Yurk said. “There's a saying, ‘You have to leave to understand what you're missing out on,’ right? And that's what I did. I left and I understood what I was missing, and I missed this place so much.”
Yurk cited Elon’s proximity to his hometown of Southern Pines, North Carolina, the coaching situation and the friendships he has here as reasons that brought him back to campus.
Being a punter, Yurk is forced to adopt a mindset far different than any other player on the football field. Punters, like any other athletes, want to excel and be out on the field to contribute, but their additions aren’t desired as much as other football positions. The offense of a football team ideally wants to score every possession and avoid having to use their punter to give the opponent the ball back. Yurk is in a position that only is utilized when the offense stalls out and is forced to punt.
“I don't necessarily want to be out there as much, but at the same time, it brings me joy taking advantage of it when I do put it down inside the 10,” Yurk said. “ I just love helping the team, that's the main thing.”
Yurk said he is supportive of the offense when they are clicking and don’t need to use him as much; he appreciates the rest. Nall emphasized the help punters give to the defense.
“He makes the job easier for the defense because he flips field position for the team,” Nall said. “We go from being backed up in our own end zone to the defense backing the other team up in their end zone. He understands how critical what he does is to the success of the team, and he puts that above everything.”
Nall praised Yurk’s focus on the team getting better as a whole while preserving through the lack of recognition punters get.
“He wants to be good as a punter, but he also wants to be good to make the team better,” Nall said. “It can be a thankless job at times because you don't hear people talk much about punters. You don't hear a lot about them, and he understands that, and that's not a big deal to him.”
Punters are also part of the special teams group, which is separated and disconnected from the team during practice. However, Yurk said there is no division outside of practice.
“Out of practice, we're always just either playing ping-pong in the room or playing video games with the fellas,” Yurk said. “It's good vibes all around, we’re not singled out.”
Over the last few years at Elon, Yurk has gotten better, improving average punt distance each year. His freshman year, he averaged about 37 yards per punt, then averaged about 44 yards the next year, and has gotten close to 49 yards at certain points this year. Yurk said that he focused on always trying to improve.
“There's a lot of technique with punting, and I'm always trying to get better,” Yurk said. “If it's trying to get more distance, trying to get more hang time, trying to put it in the right spot more often, something like that. Everything kind of comes down to form and how I'm trying to swing at the ball.”
Yurk has focused on matching distance with hang time, and making sure the ball lands in a location where Elon can gather around the ball and the returner to force a fair catch.
One of the reasons Yurk has developed into one of the best punters in the nation, according to Nall, is his conditioning and discipline. Nall said Yurk has been taking more pride in working out and watching what he eats. He also praised Yurk’s improvement under pressure.
“He's just continually worked on both the physical and the mental aspect of punting, and the mental aspect really is the last thing to come,” Nall said. “It always is. It is with players of any position. They mature and they learn how to deal with the pressure of playing a football game, and he's learned how to deal with that pressure, and it's gotten progressively better every year.”
As the end of the 2024 season nears, Yurk has one more year left at Elon as he prepares to pursue football after college. Yurk has NFL talent, but he needs to take a few more steps to get to that level, according to Nall.
“I really want to get into the NFL,” Yurk said. “That’s definitely the goal for that young kid that played in the park all those years ago.”