There had to be a little pressure, if not a lot, on Marquette King, following in the footsteps of the great Ray Guy and Shane Lechler as the punter for the Oakland Raiders, but King didn’t flinch.
After Lechler retired in 2012, the Raiders signed King as a free agent out of Fort Valley State, and all he did over the next seven seasons was continue the Silver and Black’s run of outstanding punters.
“I felt like I fit in perfectly because I wasn’t like anyone in the league,” said King, one of the first African American punters in the NFL. “The Raiders are known for embracing players who are different and have their own unique personality, which is something I admired about the organization.”
The Raiders had seen what King had done in his senior year at Fort Valley State, averaging 43 yards per punt, including 16 kicks of 50 yards or more, and sending 21 of his kicks inside the opponents’ 20-yard line. One of his kicks went for more than 80 yards, and he was selected as the team’s Most Valuable Player that season.
When the Raiders activated King after sitting out his rookie season because of an injury, he beat out veteran punter Chris Kluwe, who had punted for the Seattle Seahawks and the Minnesota Vikings over the previous eight seasons.
“Marquette simply out-punted him,” Raiders Coach Dennis Allen said. “Marquette won the competition as the punter. He works as hard as anybody on our team, probably harder, every single day.”
After King spent that rookie season on injured reserve, All-Pro punter Lechler left the Silver and Black to sign with the Houston Texans; King stepped right in and stepped up after beating out veteran Kluwe during training camp.
The 6-foot, 190-pound King led the NFL with a punting average of 48.9 yards in 2013, and one of his kicks went for 66 yards. He was even better the next season, leading the NFL with 4,930 total yards punting for a league-leading 48.9 average, both Raiders single-season records.
In his six seasons with the Raiders, King punted 426 times for 19,941 yards, a team-record 46.8-yard average, with a long kick of 72 yards, in addition to pinning opponents inside the 20-yard-line on 156 occasions while having only three punts blocked.
The fourth-leading punter in franchise history, King was selected second-team All-Pro in 2016. During a 2016 game against the Atlanta Falcons, King was fined $18,231 for making a horse-collar tackle on Eric Weems, but the Raiders didn’t mind that much because he made a touchdown-saving tackle on the play.
When the Raiders released King in 2018, he signed a free-agent contract with the Denver Broncos. Still, he punted only 20 times in four games, averaging 44.1 yards per kick, before sustaining a thigh injury that put him on the Injured Reserve List, and two days later, he reached an injury settlement with the team and was released.
"People didn’t like him,” former Raiders wide receiver Cordelle Patterson said. “He was kind of like a diva, but he wasn’t. He wouldn’t show it that much. He was just crazy, man. He had fun though. I respect him as a person, but he just did things a little different.”
After being released by the Broncos, King was selected by the St. Louis Battlehawks in the 2020 XFL Supplemental Draft and punted 19 times for 868 yards, a 45.7-yard average, in five games but had his contract terminated when the league suspended operations on April 10, 2020.
The 34-year-old King is still around and was selected in the 2023 XFL Draft by the Arlington Renegades.
King is still out there kicking.
The Raiders' offseason workout schedule is as follows:
OTA Offseason workouts: May 31-June 2, June 12-15
Mandatory Minicamp: June 6-8
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