Click HERE to vote for Pressley Harvin III for the 2020 Ray Guy Award
THE FLATS – Georgia Tech punter Pressley Harvin III (Alcolu, S.C./Sumter) moved one step closer to becoming a unanimous All-American on Thursday when the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) named him to its first team.
The NCAA recognizes unanimous All-Americans as players that receive first-team honors on all five of its officially recognized all-America teams. The NCAA currently recognizes the Associated Press (AP), AFCA, Football Writers Association of America (FWAA), Sporting News and Walter Camp as its officially recognized all-America selectors. In addition to being named to the ACFA’s first team on Thursday, Harvin has been named first-team All-America by the AP, FWAA and Sporting News over the past week.
Should Harvin receive first-team honors from Walter Camp next week, he would become only the third unanimous All-American in Georgia Tech history, joining defensive back Ken Swilling (1990) and wide receiver Calvin Johnson (2006). He is already recognized as the 22nd consensus All-American in Georgia Tech history after earning first-team recognition from a majority of the NCAA’s five official selectors.
Harvin leads the nation with a 48.0-yard punting average this season. To put his whopping 48.0-yard average into perspective, the margin between Harvin’s average and the third-best average in the nation (46.7 – Washington State’s Oscar Draguicevich) is the same as the margin between Draguicevich and the nation’s eighth-best average (45.4 – San Diego State’s Tanner Kuljian).
In addition to the 48.0-yard average, 49% of Harvin’s 45 punts this season traveled 50 or more yards, 47% were fair caught, 40% were downed inside the opponent’s 20 yard line and only 17% were returned. Thanks in large part to those gaudy numbers, Georgia Tech ranks second nationally as a team in net punting (44.6-yard average).
Harvin averaged at least 51 yards per punt three times in nine games this season (51.2 vs. UCF on Sept. 19, 51.0 at Boston College on Oct. 24 and 51.0 vs. Pitt on Dec. 10). He was named the Ray Guy Award National Punter of the Week twice and one of the award’s “Ray’s 4” recipients (honoring the nation’s four best punters each week) five times. Since the beginning of the 2019 season, he is the only punter in the nation that has had a net punting average of 50 yards in three different games (min. four punts), including twice this season – vs. UCF and at Boston College.
Harvin also currently holds a new Atlantic Coast Conference single-season record for punting average (prev.: 47.8 – North Carolina’s Brian Schmitz, 1999). His 48.0-yard average shattered Georgia Tech’s single-season school record of 45.6 yards, previously set by Rodney Williams in 1997.
One of three finalists for the 2020 Ray Guy Award (awarded to college football’s top punter), Harvin was also named first-team all-America by ESPN and The Athletic.
He was also a landslide selection as first-team all-ACC, receiving 161 total points in all-conference balloting. Only three student-athletes in the entire league received more points than Harvin – Clemson quarterback and ACC Player of the Year Trevor Lawrence, Clemson wide receiver Amari Rodgers and North Carolina wide receiver Dyami Brown. Harvin’s 161 total points in all-ACC voting were 66 more than second-team punter Lou Hedley of Miami (Fla.), who is also one of the three finalists for the 2020 Ray Guy Award (Georgia’s Jake Camarda rounds out the three Ray Guy finalists).
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