“Punt at Your Own Risk”: Blake Gillikin Pays the Price for His Performance
It's become something of a joke within the NFL that after a standout performance, players tend to get picked for "random" drug tests.
At one point during his dominant 2021 season, Myles Garrett was tested three times in a span of four weeks, leading him to tweet a pretty funny theory about why.
But it's not every day that a punter gets one of the NFL's infamous not-so-random drug tests.
Saints punter Blake Gillikin did today.
Why? Well, it's probably because Gillikin booted a ridiculous 81-yard bomb in the team's preseason loss to the Green Bay Packers on Friday.
The third year specialist has been fantastic since he entered the league, perhaps even better than prior Saints punter Thomas Morstead. Teams have been stranded on "Gillikin's Island" more than once, but this preseason rocket may be his best boot to date (even though it ended up as a touchback).
Naturally, the NFL wants to ensure that Gillikin's Howitzer of a leg is au naturale. But that didn't stop Gillikin from poking fun at the "random" nature of the test.
"Punt at your own risk" has to be a top ten caption to a drug test request image in the history of the NFL. It's good to see punters with attitude and swagger, and even better when they are absolutely LAUNCHING balls.
It even earned him an interesting Wikipedia article edit.
Gillikin's boot and subsequent drug test drew some attention on social media.
GilliKING indeed. The Saints host the Chargers in their final preseason game on Friday, August 26 at 7:00pm.
Who knows, maybe Gillikin launches an even better one then.