Football, Special Teams Review....or, Horror Avoided

So, we have reviewed the offense and the defense, and now it is time to look at the special teams. This has often been the most painful part of any review of Falcon football, and I'm happy to report that while our special teams were far from the best in the conference, we did in general avoid catastrophe, and that's something too.

Here is how I think about special teams. There are three things can happen. The first is to make a big play...hit a tough FG, get a return that flip field position, pin a team inside their ten yard line, block a kick. When you do these things in support of your cause, special teams are a huge part of winning football.

The flip side is that you can have a catastrophe. Each of those things can be done TO you as well as for you. Add in a shanked punt, and you can see how the failings of special teams can severely impact your chances of winning.

And then there is everything in the middle. As an example, look at net punting. 11 of the 13 teams in the MAC had net punting between 33 and 37 yards per kick, give or take. Does anyone really care about those four yards? No. If a team starts on the 32 or 28 does not make a significant difference.

What we should be measuring is the outliers. Who is making game changing plays and mistakes? It just seems like that is the key measure.

I will work on this further through the course of next season, but in the meantime, we have what we have.

Placekicking.

Sinisia Vrvilo was a JUCO transfer who had a really good season his junior year, and after a few years of dreadful placekicking, it was really nice to be able to count on your kicker to drill a FG, or, for that matter an XP.

Things were not as good his senior year. While Vrvilo didn't have an awful season and he was streaky and his numbers are impacted by trying a couple of 50+ FGs (only one MAC kicker made a FG over 50 yards last season), he was in the bottom half of MAC kickers when looking at FGs. He missed three field goals between 30-39, which in the MAC is considered a pretty makeable FG.

I'm going to look more in depth at this subject in the future (field goals in the MAC), but these things are true.

• We were 9-16, 12th in the MAC.
• As he often did, when Coach lost confidence in his kicker, he wouldn't try field goals at all, and we tried only 16 FGs and made only 9, both near the bottom of the conference.

On the bright side, none were blocked.

He missed 2 Xps, which equals out to about 95%, which I think is on the low side of acceptable.

So, I think placekicking earns us a C for this season. Certainly, a made FG here and there would have helped a lot and knowing you have the ability to nail one has a positive impact on your offensive playcalling. But, on the other hand, it wasn't dragging us down as in previous years.

Punting

More so than FGs, punting is a measure of the entire unit. The MAC has now gone to looking at net punting for its measurement, which I think is fair and the right thing to be measuring. Problem is that it punishes a kicker who is good a pooching a short punt to pin a team deep, which is an aboslute dagger blow. Anyway, there will be more on this as well over the course of the summer.

Nick Iovenelli is a good punter and was an excellent find for this program, and with him back, I think we are solid for the coming year. Bowling Green was fourth in net punting, which is a fine performance and a significant improvement over what we saw in the past.

The distance of the punts were just under forty yards, which was not exceptional, but we allowed returns of only about 2 yards per punt, and that's pretty impressive actually. And, that reflects (usually) not only solid coverage and tackling, but also a high kick that is hard to return.

Even more imporantly, we did not allow a punt return TD or even a return longer than 19 yards. Not too shabby. We put the other team inside the 20 12 times (on 47 punts) and had only 4 touchbacks, a ratio that I would suspect is pretty good. And we had seven punts over 50 yards.

On the negative side, two punts were blocked, and there is no way of knowing without digging into the PBP how many were shanked. But, in general, our punt and punt coverage games were strong and a contributing factor to the success we had.

Kickoff returns

I have often said that I don't care how we do on kickoff returns, so long as we don't fumble. That's not really true. A return outside the 40 is a momentum play, as is holding a team inside the 20 or 15. From looking at the numbers, the typical kickoff in the MAC has the receiving team starting somewhere in the neighborhood of the high 20s or the 30.

We were eighth in the MAC, and typically started at the 28. Individually, Kenny Lewis was pretty good (6th in the MAC), but Roger Williams was disappointing after being very strong the year before (he did battle injuries) and the two of them had the bulk of the returns.

There is no way to figure out how many times we fumbled on a kickoff without digging into the . These are very costly because they are almost certain to be in your own territory. Having said that, I don't remember any.

We had at least three returns over 30 yards, and Lewis had a 62 yard return, which is a huge play.

I give kickoff returns a C. We were clearly in the middle of the pack in our league but did not appear to overly damage the cause.

Punt Returns

Again, an ongoing weak area for our team over the years. Punt return fumbles in the OU game two years ago cost us a shot at the MAC title, for example. Again, the yards are important only in bunches, not in average. But fumbles are a disaster. (Again, I have toyed with the idea of fair catching every punt if you don't have a game breaking returner.)

Corey Partridge handled this duty for us, and he was very solid. He had an average return of about nine yards, which is in the middle of the pack in the league, but he was also reliable back there. He had a 73 yard return (without scoring) and that's a big play in any game.

Kickoff Coverage

Once again, this was only recently a disaster area. One year, there were only 3 kick returns for TDs in the MAC, and we gave up two of them. A TD return on a kickoff is an absolute momentum killer, given that it either comes after a score or is the first thing to happen in a half. There were six in the MAC this year, five by OU and Temple, and none against the Falcons.

Overall, BG was fourth in the MAC in net kickoffs, with teams starting on their own 26.

Kick coverage is truly a team effort. Special team coaches today want a high kick inside the 10 yard line and inside the numbers. If you watch, you will rarely see a good return on a kick placed inside the numbers. There simply isn't a way for a player to get any open space. It places a premium on the kicker though. I think there is a perception that they are just supposed to "let 'er rip" but getting the ball inside the numbers without putting it out of bounds does require some skill.

Of course, the nucelar bomb here is a touchback. That is an instant win on net yards, with no risk of a big play against you. (Almost 25% of NIU's kickoffs were touchbacks.)

This was clearly a strong point. We gave up a 50 yard return, but by all measures, we were effective on keeping kickoffs from being a positive play for our opponents.

Onside kicks

Again, this magnifies the whole nature of special teams. Losing an onside kick is a huge blunder that almost always costs the team, especially with young players. It is a guaranteed momentum shift that only a veteran defense can withstand. There were 18 onside kicks attempted by MAC teams last year, and (get this) 7 of them were recovered by the kicking team. I don't have any numbers to back this up, but it seems like everyone involved should be ashamed of that.

Central failed on ALL THREE of theirs. Really.

And we know that our Falcons would have played for the MAC title in all probability if we had recovered an onside kick.

I'm going to look into this more, but I am going to go out on a limb. Numbers like that should not happen. Losing an onside kick should be like missing an extra point. There is almost never an element of surprise. Just seems like you should make the grab 95% of the time.

So, that's the story. Special teams were very solid to good, and certainly not the cause of the problems we suffered, onside kick notwithstanding. In all fairness, this part of Coach Brandon's team did improve after the absolute abomindation of the Ellis/Rojas season.