
TAMPA, Fla. — Sunday’s back-and-forth Buccaneers-Colts game was wild all by itself, but the pregame warmups at Raymond James Stadium also saw an unexpectedly strange moment.
Bucs punter Bradley Pinion, warming up as normal on the field, had the unfortunate luck to have one of his punts hit a Colts player on the head. And it was not just any Colts player, but 6-foot-5, 330-pound All-Pro offensive guard Quenton Nelson, who didn’t like it at all.
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Nelson walked all the way across the field to Pinion, and the two exchanged words before they were separated by a Bucs assistant. The encounter was caught on camera by an Indianapolis photojournalist and went viral before Sunday’s kickoff.
Quenton Nelson was hit in the head by a warm up punt from @Buccaneers punter Bradley Pinion – @BigQ56 had a few words with him and after another punt came close to Nelson, he punted the ball away.
Pretty good form from the lefty. @PatMcAfeeShow #ForTheBrand #Colts pic.twitter.com/2YnOua6KIP
— Brett Bensley (@brettbensley) December 8, 2019
“He just wanted an apology. That’s all it is,” Pinion said Monday after Tampa Bay’s 38-35 comeback win. “I apologized. Then I apologized again after the game. I was going to apologize. You never mean to hit somebody with a punt. (He’s) warming up toward the area I was punting. It happens.”
Nelson is not the guy you want to unintentionally hit with a punt, but Pinion said the exchange wasn’t anything hostile.
“He was actually a nice guy,” he said. “He just walked up, asked if I would apologize. I was going to come do it anyways. I was like ‘Sorry, man. Hey, I didn’t mean to do that.’ And he said ‘Yeah, you’re cool.’”
When another Pinion punt got a bit too close to Nelson again, however, he picked up the loose ball and booted it away — left-footed no less — with impressive hang time for an offensive lineman.
“I told him, ‘I’m warming up, so I’m going to keep punting over there,’ and one came close to him,” Pinion said. “It’s Quenton Nelson. What do you expect? He didn’t have bad form, either.”
Pinion is one of the bigger punters in the league at 6-5, 229 pounds, but he’s still giving up 100 pounds to a lineman like Nelson. While Pinion is in his first year with the Bucs, he’s in his fifth year in the NFL and said he couldn’t remember hitting a player with a pregame punt before Sunday, though he came close to a big one his rookie year with San Francisco.
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“I’ve hit some coaches and personnel, but no players,” he said. “I came close to hitting Tony Romo my rookie year. It went right past his head. I’d never try to hit somebody. It just happens.”
Pinion’s punting average has been down this season, but he has the highest touchback percentage of any kickoff specialist in the league, getting touchbacks on 89 percent of his kickoffs. That’s a huge change from two years ago, when the Bucs had the league’s lowest touchback rate at 35 percent and had two kickoffs returned for touchdowns against them.
Bucs coach Bruce Arians said Monday that he hadn’t seen the pregame interaction. He had praise for Nelson last week, however, saying the Colts’ offensive line was “probably the best we’ve played all year.”
(Photo of Quenton Nelson: Jeffrey Brown / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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