Doug Blevins, Kicking Guru for College and NFL Players, Dies at 60

Doug Blevins, who successfully coached college and NFL kickers like Adam Vinatieri and Justin Tucker despite never playing football because he had cerebral palsy, died Sunday in Johnson City, eastern Tennessee. He was 60.

His son, Roman, said the cause of death in a hospital was complications of esophageal cancer.

Doug was fascinated by football from an early age, and increasingly by the nuances of kicking. He watched games and instructional videos, read books and began corresponding with former Dallas Cowboys kicking coach Ben Agajanian in high school. Doug analyzed the video Agajanian sent him and then used the information to improve the kicking of his high school team, where he coached.

“Being handicapped, I knew I would never play a down,” Blevins told The Los Angeles Times in 2000. “But I was focused on this goal: making it to the National Football League.”

Blevins, who instructed kickers from his motorized wheelchair, taught himself the mechanics of place-kicking, punting and kickoffs. He analyzed hip rotations, leg swings and toe angles; he talked to kickers about where they could ideally plant their foot before kicking a field goal and how to get their body into the end zone.

His most famous students included Vinatieri, who became one the NFL’s career scoring leader with the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts, and kicked two Super Bowl-winning field goals; Tucker of the Baltimore Ravens, who holds the league record for highest percentage of field goals made; and Olindo Mare, the Miami Dolphins all-time goal scorer and field goal leader.

In the mid-1990s, news of Blevins’ reputation as a guru began to spread. Through an administrator at a community college where he had coached, he came to the attention of Dick Steinberg, the general manager of the New York Jets.

Blevins provided Steinberg with scouting reports on the Jets’ kickers in 1993, and the following season he worked as the team’s kicking consultant, a major shift in his career.

“This is an uphill battle,” Blevins told Sports Illustrated for a profile of him in 2004, noting that it was especially difficult because he was not a former player and even more challenging because of his disability. “I needed walking, talking resumes. If I found guys who became successful kickers in the NFL, I would always have a place in this league.

In 1995, he began a five-year consulting stint with the World League of American Football (later known as NFL Europe), where his duties included teaching football players how to be NFL-style kickers and selecting the kickers for the teams.

Between 1995 and 1996, he also spent several months in Abingdon, Virginia, living with Vinatieri, an undrafted kicker from South Dakota State University, where he refined his place-kicking skills.

As a result of their collaboration, Vinatieri had become a more consistent kicker, shooting footballs from his powerful right foot. Blevins signed him to the Amsterdam Admirals of the World League in 1996, and the Patriots signed him later that year. His career included kicking two Super Bowl-winning field goals for the Patriots.

“Doug has the perfect kick in mind,” Vinatieri told Sports Illustrated. “He watches you and thinks about what to do.”

“Without him I wouldn’t be here,” Vinatieri added.

William Douglas Blevins was born on August 3, 1963 in Abingdon. His father, Willis, was an engineer. His mother, Linda (LaFon) Blevins, was a nurse who encouraged Doug to pursue whatever he wanted.

In the early 1980s, Blevins was a student assistant coach under Johnny Majors while attending the University of Tennessee. After transferring to East Tennessee State University, in Johnson City, he held the same position, working for head coach Mike Ayers, and earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice sciences in 1988.

He soon began organizing instructional camps in the southeastern states – which he did for years – and teaching kickers. From 1992 to 1995, he was the special teams coordinator and kicking coach at Abingdon High School.

In 1997, while still working for the World League, \Mr. Blevins was hired by Jimmy Johnson, the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, as a kicking coach. He helped Mare win the No. 1 job by slowing down his kick.

Johnson said Blevins’ single-minded focus helped the kickers.

“A lot of kickers just come off and get out of rhythm; A lot can happen to them if someone doesn’t coach them every kick,” Johnson said in a phone interview. “Doug knew this was his role and mapped out all his kicks, and Mare became one of the best Dolphins kickers ever.”

After six years with the Dolphins, Blevins became an advisor to the Minnesota Vikings in 2004. He helped improve Aaron Elling’s yardage and hangtime on kickoffs.

During the team’s training camp that year, Elling told The Minneapolis Star Tribune that Blevins “can see every mechanical thing you do on a kick at once.”

The Vikings job was Blevins’ last for an NFL team. But he continued to work with kickers individually, coaching at Emory & Henry College, in Emory, Va., and at East Tennessee State. He had agreed to join the staff at Tusculum University in Greeneville, Tennessee, before he was diagnosed with cancer.

Billy Taylor, Tusculum’s new head coach, was a player at East Tennessee State when Blevins was a student assistant coach.

“Doug drove into Coach Ayers’ office and said, ‘Coach, I’ve had cerebral palsy my whole life, but I’m a linebacker at heart,’” Taylor said by phone, recalling the conversation. “‘I love football and I want to be part of this.'”

In addition to his son, Roman, from his first marriage to Nenita Colon, which ended in divorce, Blevins is also survived by his parents; his daughter, Sarah Blevins, from his marriage to Nancy Duque, which also ended in divorce; his brother, Greg LaFon; his grandmother, Kathleen Hensley; and his stepmother, Carmen Blevins.

Blevins said his disability did not diminish his passion for coaching players in a specialty he knew so well.

‘Professional football is a results-oriented business’ he told Abilities.com, a website for the disabled. “Once people saw that I could create the results they wanted and achieve the right level of success, I was welcomed into the arena.”