Brett Kern's consistency, meticulousness made him one of Tennessee Titans' best ever

To this day, Brett Kern still doesn't understand the drill. But he knows how much it helped.

Kern announced his retirement from the NFL after 15 years Friday. The two-time All-Pro and three-time Pro Bowl punter spent 13 seasons with the Tennessee Titans, setting nearly every franchise punting record. Most punts. Most punt yards. Most net punt yards. Most punts downed inside the 20-yard line.

Titans announcer Mike Keith called Kern "the best situational punter in the NFL," a moniker Kern's numbers support. Precision was the key to Kern's success. At his retirement press conference, he told stories about trying to predict the weather of games scheduled for September as early as May and about still having Excel spreadsheets that detailed how every kicker he ever held for likes the ball tilted and rotated.

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He also remembered a drill former Titans special teams coordinator Nate Kaczor made him rep over and over again that simulated and foreshadowed his success.

"The box that you set up with cones 10 yards apart on the sidelines and at the bottom of the numbers seemed crazy to me at the time," Kern said of Kaczor. "This drill resulted in me trying to hit a 45- to 55-yard punt outside the numbers with bonus points for a ball going out of bounds. Yet I still don't understand the point system. You challenged me to go nine out of 10 or 10 out of 10 and being challenged like that took me to the next level."

'I just did my best'

Thursday's retirement and press conference was a celebration of Kern's knacks for repetition and precision. He says he laughed at the idea that he was ever thought of as the Titans' best player. But from 2017-21, as the Titans were emerging as the team to beat in the AFC South, Kern's skills often proved as important or more important than those of star players like Derrick Henry and Kevin Byard.

During those five years, in which the Titans made the playoffs four times, Kern downed 46.3% of his punts inside the 20-yard line. In 2022, there were only three punters who averaged that good of a mark for one season. Kern did it over a span including more than 300 punts.

Kern's consistency and meticulousness were rewarded. Kern was named to the Pro Bowl three consecutive years from 2017-19. Since 2000, the only player who has represented the Titans at more Pro Bowls is defensive tackle Jurrell Casey.

"I was just trying to be as consistent as I could be," Kern says. "Just helping the team with field position. You don't get a lot of cracks. Sometimes during a game you get two punts. There were some years where it was more than two punts. But you want to make them the best that you could make them. I just did my best. If that meant people thought I was the best on the team, then great. If not, it didn't matter."

A family affair

A long list of current and former Titans players and coaches showed up to support Kern in retirement. Ryan Stonehouse, Kern's replacement as the Titans' punter, was on hand. So was Titans' long snapper Morgan Cox and special teams coach Craig Aukerman, alongside coach Mike Vrabel. Kern's battery mates from his best years, long snapper Beau Brinkley and kicker Ryan Succop, sat behind Kern's wife Tiffany and their three kids: Bryce, Anelle and Quinn.

It was hardly a somber affair. Brinkley smiled while shadow-boxing with Kern's kids (whom Kern called his "kernels") after the speech. Kern smiled, joked and shook hands with every staff member in the room. He thanked the operations staff for passing along his hotel room recommendations to Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk and he thanked the equipment staff for cutting the pockets out of, as he estimates, 35,000 pairs of pants.

It's hard to overstate what Kern meant to the Titans. Kern played 197 games in a Titans uniform, the most of any player since the team moved to Tennessee in 1997. Counting the Houston Oilers years, only Hall of Famers Bruce Matthews and Elvin Bethea have played more games for the franchise.

Kern did his part for more than a decade. He held game-winning kicks for Rob Bironas and Succop and he launched arguably the most memorable punt in franchise history, downing the New England Patriots at the 1-yard line late in the fourth quarter in the divisional round of the 2020 NFL playoffs, essentially ending Tom Brady's Patriots career.

Now he's giving more time to his family, his faith, his golf swing and his kids' basketball games. He said the choice to retire wasn't hard. He loved his time in the NFL, and now he's on to what's next.

"There's just a lot more to catch up on," Kern said. "(My family) sacrificed a lot too over the years, from the training camps to all the road trips. Me trying to separate the stress of football before I came home and not to put it on them when I got home. I'm looking at more family time and more travel time. I'm excited."

Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com. Follow Nick on Twitter @nicksuss.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: In retirement, Brett Kern reflects on what made him Tennessee Titans great