Like father, like son

EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ - Like the Energizer Bunny, Jeff Feagles keeps going and going and going. The most prolific punter in NFL history is in his 21st professional season. He has 323 consecutive regular season games, 1,596 punts, 66,254 yards and, after a two-decade wait, one Super Bowl ring to his credit.

Feagles’ wife Michelle has been with him for his entire professional journey. Actually, they’ve been partners longer than that. They began dating when Jeff was a junior and Michelle a sophomore at Gerard High School in Phoenix. Since then, they’ve been on a football odyssey that has taken them to college in Miami and NFL stops in New England, Philadelphia, Arizona, Seattle and, since 2003, the Giants. Along the way they raised four sons. It has been a rich, rewarding, entertaining and fun life in which punting a football has always played an integral role.

But for Jeff and Michelle, the greatest joys from punting are yet to come. Not because Feagles, 42, plans to play until he’s eligible for Social Security. Their oldest son, C.J., is an outstanding senior punter at Ridgewood (N.J.) High School who has received a full scholarship to the University of North Carolina.

“I’m very proud of him,” Jeff Feagles said. “With my career winding down it’s going to be a pleasure to go watch a football game and have your son doing what you did forever. Plus, I’ll be able to critique him as well. He has a lot of natural talent, more than I had, and he’s got the coaching. I never had the coaching and had to be self-taught, but he’s getting the coaching and he’s very coachable and he understands the position.”

C.J. – his given name is Christopher Jeffrey, but he’s been known by his initials since shortly after birth – hopes to play in the NFL some day. Five years from now, Jeff will be 47. Heck, George Blanda kicked a 41-yard field goal in the 1975 AFC Championship Game when he was 48. Is it possible Jeff and C.J. might someday be dueling punters in the same NFL game?

“You really think about that,” Feagles said. “He’s one step removed from the next level. I think he can have a good college career and his goals are one year at a time, but I know his long term goals are to be a professional. It would be a great experience for me and him as well as my wife to go and watch him kick. I just can’t wait.”

“That would be unbelievable,” C.J. said of joining an NFL team while his father is still in the league. “Obviously, if that were to happen it would be a long time from now. It would be really cool.”

For now, he’ll enjoy his current circumstance. After all, how many high school seniors have a father playing in the NFL, not to mention one who just brought home a Super Bowl ring?

“All my friends think it’s cool and it’s fun,” C.J. said.

Given that, should we be surprised that the parent who pushed him back to football was … Michelle?

When he was young, C.J. would go out in the backyard and emulate his father. Even then, it was obvious he had a lot of talent. C.J. punted as a high school freshman, but sat out his sophomore season two years ago. His father chose not to intervene.

“I wasn’t upset, because I didn’t want to push him into something he didn’t want to do,” Feagles said. “But I told him when you’re ready I’ll help you, but if you don’t want to do it I’m not going to force you to do it. But really, his mother forced him to play football his junior year. She’s taking credit for all of it.”

Rightly – and proudly – so. Michelle has become a connoisseur of punting over the last 25 years. She knows a strong leg when she sees one. But C.J. was keeping his in the house.

“He’s not a bad kid by any stretch of the imagination, but just the down time with cell phones and computers these days drove us nuts - that he would just not physically engage in anything,” Michelle said. “I think he regretted that. It was one of those lazy teenager things where he didn’t want to go to summer practice, but once football season starts he sees all of his friends and says that he should have done that.”

Michelle didn’t want C.J. spending another autumn with electronic gadgets, so she not-so-gently prodded him to get back onto the football field.

“Jeff is so laid back and doesn’t want to force his kids to do anything,” she said. “We’ve been dating since high school, so I’ve been out with Jeff kicking in the park since he was 18 years old. I’ve seen a lot of practice and I said to C.J., ‘I’ve seen you kick for fun in the backyard. You’re really good.’ I asked him for one year and he said he didn’t want to, that he just liked doing it for fun. I told him if he hated it he could hang up his shoes and I’d never say another word. He actually ended up really enjoying it and realized he definitely had some talent that trickled down.

“We’re just thrilled to have him focusing on something and seeing that he really enjoys it, too, and isn’t just doing it because he’s good at it. He thoroughly enjoys it and you can tell that he has found something he really loves to do. He obviously has the talent, but I’m the mean mom who likes to get people to do things they don't want to do. So yeah, I have to say I’m guilty of forcing him.”

Good thing she did. C.J. quickly became one of the best punters in the region. On Tuesdays, the players’ day off, he would receive special tutoring from his father.

“I kept telling him if you want to work, I’m there for you and I’ll help you and we’ll dedicate the time and the effort and we’ll find a place to kick in the winter and we’ll do it,” Jeff said. “He did fairly well, not great. After my season was over we talked about working on his technique and fundamentals and taking punting a little more seriously and he committed to doing it.”

Two or three days a week, Jeff and C.J. would work out in a bubble in nearby Waldwick owned by former Giant Jim Burt. They would also work in the bubble in the Giants Stadium Parking lot. A member of the team’s video department would often tape the workouts, which father and son would review at home. C.J. became focused on improving his techniques and fundamentals. In the spring, they resumed their work outdoors.

At the same time, Jeff began investigating which colleges needed punters and where he had connections with the coaching staff. He talked to members of the Giants coaching staff who were familiar with the recruiting process. Feagles also consulted with Phil Simms, whose two sons were both highly-recruited quarterbacks.

“He gave me some great advice on what to look at and how you go about doing these things,” Feagles said. “One thing he told me is you have to get a list of schools you’d like to go to, then you have to investigate what kids are on scholarship there and then investigate the other kids that may not be on scholarship. The path that colleges like to take with punters and kickers is they invite them to walk on for a year to see them kick, evaluate them, and then there is usually a scholarship at the end of it.”

C.J. took another route. He planned to attend several football camps, but first went to a college showcase at Rutgers that included a lot of punters from the metropolitan area. C.J. acquitted himself well in comparison with the other players. “That gave him a little bit of confidence knowing that, ‘Hey, I think I’m better than these other guys and these are the top recruits in the area,’” Jeff said.

Soon after C.J.’s school year ended on June 25, Jeff and he traveled to North Carolina. The head coach there is Butch Davis, who was the defensive line coach at Miami when Feagles played college football. The two men have remained close through the years.

“C.J. had a great workout and they ended up liking what they saw,” Jeff said. “Knowing the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, they ended up offering him a scholarship. In the meantime, we were really high on going to Boston College. That’s the school C.J. really wanted to look at. They were very, very interested, but they didn’t have a scholarship to offer.”

So C.J. will be a Tarheel in 2009.

“They are planning on C.J. playing his freshman year, which we have to get him ready for,” said Jeff, who, thanks to his friendship with Davis, will be able to continue tutoring his son without the coaching staff considering it meddling. “I told him the other day, ‘Listen, you’re a year away right now from going on national TV.’ I didn’t want to scare him but that’s reality."

It would not have been if stayed on his computer. But approximately a year after Michelle all but ordered C.J. out of the house, he has a full ride to a great university in a major conference with a beautiful campus about a 90-minute flight from home.

“I never miss an opportunity to say, ‘I told you so,’” Michelle said. “Mom knows best and I like to point that out.”

Any teenager would argue that point, but C.J. is happy Michelle was right this time.

“I knew I had some talent, but I wasn’t really full into playing football,” C.J. said. “I was more into messing around with my friends and throwing the ball around. If we were playing, I would punt it every once in a while, but I never actually thought of doing it in high school or at that level.

“My dad thought I had talent, but he didn’t want to make me play football. He didn’t want to be one of those dads. My mom used to see me in the backyard messing around and thought I was pretty good, so she encouraged me to play.”

Before he heads to Tobacco Road, C.J. is completing his high school career at Ridgewood High. In addition to his punting duties, he is also a wide receiver and safety. After watching Jeff for more than two decades, Michelle thinks first about the all-important net average, so she watches the flight of the ball and not Jeff. But it’s a whole different feeling when her oldest son is on the field.

“I’m so confident with Jeff,” she said. “With C.J., I’m just so nervous for him and my stomach is in knots when I watch him play. Once the ball is gone, then I feel good. But C.J. is bigger than Jeff was at that age, so C.J. has some meat on his bones; Jeff was lankier. I just worry about his nerves and wanting him to succeed, so I get a little nervous - as I used to when Jeff was first in the league and in college as well.”

All these years later, Jeff’s still kicking. And now he has someone to follow his footsteps.

“He’s probably a spilt image of me,” Feagles said. "C.J. is very laid back, very outgoing, but maybe a little lazier than I am. But he’s a good all around kid and good to be around.

“He’s also very similar on the field. Our technique and fundamentals – we have the same leg swing and mannerisms. It’s pretty scary. We work a lot on directional and coffin corner kicks. He’s only going to get better. The upside is endless and the one thing I will be able to work with him on that nobody did with me is the mental side of kicking. Hopefully, one day he’ll be in the league and you’ll see the similarities.”

(giants.com)