Production pays, even for punters. And Logan Cooke is getting paid.
The Jacksonville Jaguars have finalized a new deal with their long-time specialist which will make Cooke the highest-paid active punter in the National Football League. Per reports, the former Bulldog booter will earn $4.0 million annually. That is said to be about $330,000 more than the previous best-paid punter, from Seattle.
It is also a sizable raise of rate for Cooke. He was due to go into the final season on a four-year contract signed back in 2022 which was to pay him $3.0 million for the 2025 campaign.
This reward for a job well-done comes before Cooke starts his eighth NFL season, all with the Jaguars. In fact he is currently has the longest tenure of anyone on the Jacksonville roster.
And, Cooke is coming off his first Pro Bowl selection as well. This was after he averaged 49.4 yards per punt, the best year of his career and topping his 2022 rate by a tenth of a yard. In now seven seasons Cooke has officially kicked the ball away 468 times in 112 regular season games, with a career average of 47.6 yards. Only once has he had a punt blocked, that back in 2021.
Of his total kicks 83 have been spotted inside the ten-yard line to begin the other team's turn with the ball, best by any NFL kicker in his tenure. And none of his punts have been returned for a touchdown so far.
But what truly stands out for Cooke is that his career 43.59 yard net punting average for his career is the best in NFL history. A history that began in just 1976 to be fair when the statistic became a thing, but half-a-century is long enough to make a claim of Cooke belonging among the best ever to boot a ball away in the NFL. He also holds for placekicks.
At 29 years of age Cooke has plenty life left in the leg, and he has more thanl rewarded the Jaguars for using a draft pick on him back in 2018. A seventh-round pick to be sure, and he was the 247th player taken overall that year.
Cooke's record-setting professional career follows a solid if not spectacular four seasons with Mississippi State. A Columbia, Miss., Academy athlete his college offers came from Dan Mullen's program as well as local school Southern Mississippi. He was not a typical-looking punter either at 6-5 plus and 230 pounds, and that physique would only come to full maturity in the NFL.
(Photo: Steve Robertson , Scout.com)
For his Bulldog career Cooke punted 150 times from 2014-17 with a 41.7 yard average, and got to participate in four bowl games. He still ranks 10th in State career punts and 9th for yards but 6th-best for average.
Rather ironically, his last college game was the Taxslayer Bowl held in the same Jacksonville stadium he would soon call home.
As has been suggested here before, the generation of 21st Century Bulldog alumni who have or are still making their names in the NFL seems likely to finally put a Mississippi State player in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Whether it is now-retired Fletcher Cox beating still-active Chris Jones to that title is entertaining discussion.
But if stats and records matter, Logan Cooke in time ought receive at least consideration for doing what he does so well.