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Special Teams

Stan Gable

Stan Gable

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Adams College
Pretty much everything outside of Kinal (okay) has been an abomination this year. Can we hire a dedicated coach please?
 
That was the worst corner blitz I've ever seen. Unblocked, and he still didn't get within 30 feet.
 
I'm all for hiring a real special teams coach. The worst special teams I've ever seen. The absolute worst.
 
My brain says that we do practice special teams, because ... well every team practices it. However, my eyes say there is no way we have practiced it one single time this entire year. That is the only thing that could make sense, given how horribly pathetic all of our special teams have been. I think the thing that baffles me the most is just how terrible we are on kick returns. Our guys dance around for several seconds before running into about 6 defenders at the 15 or so yard line. The days of Kevin Marion, Kenny Moore, Fabian Davis being a threat on every kick are loooooooooong gone. Now a victory is getting a touchback, so we can get ball on the 25.
 
Abysmal. It's a damn shame Coach Henry lost his job before the season and the special teams are WORSE.
 
Couldn't agree more. We must dfl in kickoff returns. I'm trying to think if we've had any go past the 25. When you have inferior talent you have to win special teams (likebeamer's old teams) or at least not lose there.
 
Henry Chinaski said:
Couldn't agree more. We must dfl in kickoff returns. I'm trying to think if we've had any go past the 25. When you have inferior talent you have to win special teams (likebeamer's old teams) or at least not lose there.
Click to expand...

Its a victory if we make it out to the 20. I can't remember the last KO return past, say, the 35, and other than Jackson's long punt return against Clemson I think it was, I don't recall many punt returns over 10 yards.
 
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Everything about this sector is just God awful.

It's mind-boggling how bad we can be at the entire sector when we supposedly put our best athletes there...horrible.
 
Special teams are where you find out who wants to play, when your special teams suck it more often relates to not having excited players on the field that want to play football. They are going through the motions hoping someone else will make the play, not a winning combination.
 
Henry Chinaski said:
Couldn't agree more. We must dfl in kickoff returns. I'm trying to think if we've had any go past the 25. When you have inferior talent you have to win special teams (likebeamer's old teams) or at least not lose there.
Click to expand...


We had one past the 30 against State, it just got called back by a holding penalty
 
According to Football Outsiders, we had the #93 ranked special teams going into Saturday and we were #110 in Kickoff Return Efficiency defined as "the scoring value per opponent kickoff earned by the receiving team as measured against national return rates".

See the link for more explanation:
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/feist2012
 
I told my Dad recently that it was like there was some sort of unspoken competition between our return teams and our coverage teams to see who could be worse at what they do, and the loser (i.e. the better unit) would be summarily executed at the end of the season.
 
I literally have never seen anything like our KO returns... It is like the return guy runs up until he gets kind of close to the coverage team and then kinda lays down - usually around the 15-20 yd line.
 
scooter84 said:
I literally have never seen anything like our KO returns... It is like the return guy runs up until he gets kind of close to the coverage team and then kinda lays down - usually around the 15-20 yd line.
Click to expand...

That is a very good and sadly accurate description.
 
A friend of mine compiled the stats of all our kickoff returns. Keep in mind, you now start at the 25 on a touchback.

On balls we have chosen to return, our average start position is the 20.3 yard line (4.7 yards short of the 25)

We have 19 "Negative" kickoff returns. (Negative = Not getting the ball to the 25 yard line)
We have 4 "Positive" kickoff returns. (Positive = at least +1 yard over the 25 yard line)

We have 6 returns where we start <15
We have 2 returns where we start at the >35.

With the 25 yard line as the goal, We are net -108 yards on Kickoff returns.

Solution? Let every ball go for a touchback. We increase our starting field position by 4.7 yards. We take out the risk of a turnover/Penalty. And the 1.5+ hours devoted to Kickoff return practice during the week, we could practice Extra Points, Blocking, whatever...
 
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