GREEN BAY, Wis. -- The Green Bay Packers' first full-fledged punting competition in five years lasted all of 12 days.
They apparently didn't need any longer to decide to stick with Tim Masthay.
Less than two weeks into training camp, the Packers cut Cody Mandell on Monday despite a respectable showing in practice by the first-year punter. They didn't even feel the need to go into the first preseason game before they made their decision.
"It sends a message to me that it's a vote of confidence from the organization," Masthay said Monday. "At least that's the way I perceive it."
Although the team did not explain its decision to end the competition so soon, Masthay knows he still must continue to perform the way he has early in camp. On Monday, he hit all four of his punts solidly and averaged 49.0 yards and 4.38 seconds of hang time.
"By no means do I take it as, 'You're guaranteed to be the punter,'" Masthay said. "I feel like I've still got about 25 days, I think, until preseason's over. I've got 25 days to keep working to improve, keep working to perform. That's my focus."
What it should do is allow Masthay to get into a good rhythm leading into the regular season. When he struggled late last season on the way to a career-low 37.0-yard net average, he said it was as much mental as it was physical.
"I allowed too many negative thoughts to distract me; that was one -- a big one," Masthay said. "And two, I felt like I hurried myself a little too much. There's a John Wooden quote that I'm a big fan of. It's, 'Be quick. Don't hurry.' I felt like I hurried a little bit. I was trying to be a little quicker, and instead I was hurrying myself. I think those were the two main mistakes I made. I don't plan on making them again."
Masthay welcomed the competition, his first since he won the job in 2010, from the get go when the Packers signed Mandell in January.
"I know it may be hard to believe from the outside just because you see it as a mano-a-mano battle and one guy's going to win the job sort of thing," Masthay said. "But for the most part, I really am just focused on doing my own job -- trying to hold as well as I can, trying to punt as well as I can, trying to be punctual to meetings, weightlifting, try to work hard on my body, try to be a good teammate, try to be attentive to coaches. That's been my main focus. My focus is never try to beat out the other punter. I'm just trying to do everything professionally and perform as well as I can."
Masthay is under contract through the 2016 season and his average salary of $1,366,250 per season ranks 16th among all punters in the league.
He also serves as Mason Crosby's holder on field goals and extra points. Crosby has made 34-of-38 field goals this camp and all four misses were with Mandell as the holder.
"Obviously, I've worked with Tim these last five years, and we've gotten a million reps," Crosby said. "We've worked a ton together. I thought Cody did a good job of kind of working on that and getting to where he looked as similar to Tim as far as operation as we could get, kind of in the relatively short time we had to work together. So give him credit for just coming in, really taking that to heart that he wanted to be good at that and working hard there. These are the tough things about the business we're in. I just hope he keeps working hard and gets another chance."
