Saturday, January 12, 2013

Football Review....Special Teams...

So, our final review of Falcon football for the year is special teams.  We've looked at the offense and we have looked at the defense, so we have been from the valley to the mountain.  Now, we looked at the special teams, which are somewhere in the middle, closer to the valley, but in the middle.

First, using our ICSTR measures, it was a very unusual year.  BG was +13 for the year with +14 in the OU game alone.  BG was in positive territory for 7 of the games, but they were usually just slightly in positive territory.  It was the second worst year in the Clawson era, by this measure, eclipsed only by the +1 in 2009.  Last year, BG was +26.

The odd thing was the opposition.  BG's opposition earned a net 44 positive points, which is more positive points than our opponents have had in the three Clawson years combined.  Remember that our scoring system is not zero sum.  Some special teams plays are good without a bad play being made on the other side.  For example, a punt that is downed on the 10 yard line does not reflect on the receiving team.  Nor does a made 45 yard FG.

Only Idaho, OU and San Jose State had negative games against BG.  Idaho and San Jose State were only -1.

Suffice it to say.  BG's special teams were not awful but we were not close to our competition.

Le'ts look some more.

For example, punting.  Brian Schmeidebusch was just great his first year and probably only good this year.  In '11, his punts were rarely returned and rarely touchbacks.  This year, BG won the net punting battle by only 1.2 yards and our net was about five yards lower than it was the year before.  BG punting 15 times more, so overall numbers are tough to compare.  In fact, if you take touchbacks compared to punts inside the 20, BG's % was almost the same as last year.

Here's the key.  BG had 24 inside 20 and 12 TBs.  Our opponents had 25 inside the 20 and 4 touchbacks.

So, not bad for BG per se, but not nearly as effective as the opposition.

How about field goals?  Look, we all had a lot of frustration about this, but I think it is going in the right direction.  BG used two kickers, Steven Stein and Tyler Tate.  Stein was 2-7 on FGs with a long of 26.  Tyler Tate, not surprisingly, won the job and I think that he will be a good kicker.  He was 7 of 10, which is pretty good, with a long of 42.  He was 6-8 inside 40 yards (80% is the rough conference norm) and if he can get his effective range up into the mid-high 40s, he will be fine.

Our opponents made 14 out of 16 with 5 over 40 and one over 50.

Kickoffs were actually pretty even.  BG had an average of 37.5 net on kickoffs while our opponents were 37.1.  The average is hampered a little bit by kicks Stein made.  Anthony Farinella had an average of 58 yards on each kick, 8 touchbacks and 3 OB.  Our coverage was good.  We allowed no TDs and no return longer than 38 yards, while BG had a long return of 52 yards.

The NCAA took a shot at taking kickoffs out of the game this year...Not sure the impact was as big as they imagined.

BG had a relative strong PR game.  Boo Boo had a TD, Burbrink averaged almost 9 yards a return and our opponents averaged only 5.6 yards per return.

BG had 3 punts and one FG blocked and blocked 2 punts.

So, again, no huge smoking gun but overall we were not as good as our opponents on special teams.  I do think that our coverage units have improved right along with the defense--which you would expect--and that Schmeidbusch is a good punter and Tate will be a solid kicker for us.  I would expect this unit to improve next year.

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