NFL Thoughts, Week 14

This year, Nate Burleson, Leon Washington, and Josh Cribbs have emerged as celebrity threats to run kickoffs and punts back for touchdowns at any moment. Meanwhile, Devin Hester has solidified himself as a bona fide rock star in Chicago for his highly specialized explosiveness. As a whole, there have already been 35 punts or kickoffs returned for touchdowns this year, compared to 24 for all of last season. Overall, this might be the sexiest year ever for kickoff and punt returns.

Do all these new flashy, special team stuntmen spell total anarchy for the NFL? Not really. Of the ten teams who’ve scored more than one touchdown on kickoff and/or punt returns, only 5 would be in the playoffs if the season ended today. Further, the non-playoff Bears lead the league with 5 TD returns, and the non-playoff Ravens are tied for second with 3. So even the best, most dangerous return teams haven’t given their organizations much of a competitive advantage. Similarly, of the 12 current playoff-bound teams, only 7 are among the league leaders in combined kickoff/punt return averages (Buffalo’s #1). So do special teams have any special significance? Or are they all style and no substance?

I went back to the 2002-2003 season and examined the past 5 years’ worth of special teams data. Focusing on what I thought to the most significant stats for kickoff and punt returns, I selected six of them. Four were offensive: average kickoff return yards, total kickoff returns for touchdowns, average punt return yards, and total punt returns for touchdowns. Subsequently, two of them were defensive: the average net yardage allowed on punt returns (meaning the average of the punt itself minus the amount returned by the opposing team), and the percentage of punts that pin the opposing team inside their own 20-yard line.

What I found is that of the twelve playoff teams each year, only 5 of them on average were among the top-12 in kickoff return yards. Only 4.4 of them on average were among the top-12 in punt return yardage. The net-return yardage allowed stats were even LESS indicative of a team’s success, as only 4.2 playoff teams on average were among the top-12. And the touchdown return numbers seemed the least significant of all: there were usually about 20 teams each year who didn’t return a single punt or kickoff back for a touchdown the entire season, and anywhere from 6-to-9 of those teams were playoff participants. So while brilliant kickoff and punting performances might provide dramatic plot twists to individual games, their ability to enhance a team’s playoff chances over the entire season are marginal at best.

The one stat that did seem to matter—albeit slightly—was that %-inside-the-20 one, in which 5.2 of the playoff teams on average were in the annual top-12. More telling was the fact that in two of the five years, 2 of the top 3 teams in that category were playoff teams. And one season, 2004-2005, the top-3 teams in %-inside-the-20 were ALL playoff teams.
These results are somewhat intuitive. Good teams are going to have fewer kickoff return opportunities in general, because the opposing teams won’t be scoring field goals and touchdowns against them as much. And I would have to assume that most kicks end in simple touchbacks, although I could find the actual percentage anywhere. Moreover, good teams will probably be receiving more onsides-kicks from desperate teams who they are leading late in games, which again would damper their return yard averages. And when they DO receive regular kickoffs and punts, good teams will normally be ahead on the scoreboard, and therefore less likely to try and “make something happen,” opting instead to just take a touchback or a fair catch.

As for net punt yardage allowed, bad teams will more often than not be punting from deep inside their own territory, and therefore their punters can blast the ball as hard and far away as possible, which will increase the likelihood of a high net yardage. Good teams, on the other hand, will usually be punting from advantageous field position, resulting in lower net yardage and a higher percentage of punts that end up inside the opposition’s 20-yard line. Thus, these stats are all circumstantially explicable, and do not seem to indicate that a new generation of return superheroes can carry their teams to glory.

So the conclusion is that crack kickoff and punt units have no real correlation with their team’s overall success. And yet…to be thorough, I should probably check out overall offensive and defensive statistics and examine their correlations. What if they’re equally insignificant? What if, say, only about half the playoff teams each year are among the best in yards/game or yards allowed/game? Hmm. Or what about teams that have really good special team stats, but are otherwise mediocre-to-poor offensively and defensively? Then you could make the case that special teams are extremely significant, because there’d be no other explanation. That would probably be a better way to approach this question. Or maybe I should just not do anything and enjoy the games. After all, as my statistics professor liked to say, the numbers will tell you anything if you torture them long enough.

Offensive Player of the Week: Tom Brady, Patriots. 32-46 for 399 yards, 4 TDs, and 0 picks, all against the #1 rated defense in the league. Plus he dished out some Stone Cold Steve Austin-style trash-talking to Anthony Smith like he just gave him a stunner. The ratings for this week’s game against the Jets should be huge, and not without an element of bloodlust, because it’s going to go down like a public hanging.

Defensive Player of the Week: Gary Brackett, Colts. 9 tackles and 2 interceptions, one for 49-yards. Like most Jersey guys, Brackett’s a 5-11, 230 lb.-schlubby dude who went to Rutgers. Unlike most Jersey guys, he’s got 102 tackles on the season and is a key ingredient of the reigning world champions’ ferocious defense.