A second look at punting

When I reviewed special teams, I took a quick look at punting, which I felt was pretty good. I still think that, but actual facts have interceded to tone the enthusiasm down just a little bit.

First, I had noted that our punter had put the ball inside the 20 yard line 12 times with only four touchbacks. I thought that was pretty good, but actually, it doesn't appear to be as strong as I thought.

I took each MAC team's punts inside the 20 and touchbacks, and then I looked to see what percentage of those kicks were inside the 20.

The first thing that surprised me was that there were so few touchbacks on punts. It seems like it happens all the time, but in fact, last year in the MAC, only 42 punts ended up as touchbacks.

So, what about these percentages. First of all, EMU and Miami went the entire season without a touchback. In fact, the MAC average was 82%. Our 75% was below that and among the lowest ranks in the conference. So, maybe we weren't as good on this as I thought.

The real way to test this would be to get into the play by play data, and figure out how often a team punting from inside the 50 manages to get the ball inside the 20---and the 10, and how often there are touchbacks.

The typical net on a punt in the MAC was 34 yards. So, if you are punting from the 50 and get a touchback, you have lost a few yards, because the net is only 30 yards.

Anyway, absent that data, this is a pretty good proxy I think.

I also noted that we had two kicks blocked. It didn't seem too bad, but in fact, it is probably an issue. There were only 10 punts blocked in the whole conference last year, and only two teams were blocked twice, BG and Kent. Further, we almost never punted. Our 45 punts is really low. Buffalo and Temple both punted in the 60s. So, getting two blocks on 50% fewer kicks (under worst case conditions) is probably an issue.

On other hand (and not to get all philosophical), most teams in the MAC were blocked once, so there's a good chance that's a normal occurence, which means that we're only really talking about the second block and who can say for sure that just wasn't some bad luck, too.

Anyway, just a few more fact-based observations on our football team over the last year.