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Pro Bowl week so hey let's thread this bitch.  Rick Gosselin of Dallas Morning News published his yearly special teams rankings a few days ago which you can read here or just look at the condensed version above. Football Outsiders and PFF also keep their own set of special teams data which doesn't quite agree with Rick's however they are both really, really close. You can check out Football Outsiders DVOA special team values here or just look at the more traditional stats via ESPN statistics page In summary though there's some data that really stood out to me beside Packer's Special Teams no longer being an abomination unto the lord despite having a terrible FG kicking experience this year. Kickoff returns is a pretty damning indictment on Hester and it's so weird to see Chicago this low. On the same end, seeing Baltimore very high is interesting because they've had issues so far during the playoffs with their kickoff returns. pre:KICKOFF RETURNS Best: Baltimore, 27.3 yards Worst: Chicago, 19.8 yards pre:BLOCKED KICKS Best: Buffalo, 5  Good lord Houston, also Atlanta being last isn't surprising that is in general a well coached low penalized team.pre:PENALTIES Best: Atlanta, 7 Worst: Houston, 28 pre:BLOCKED KICKS ALLOWED Best: 8 teams tied with 0 Worst: NY Jets, 5 The Arizona Cardinals both punted the most in the NFL - 112 times - a full 20 times higher than the next worst (Jacksonville) they also very nearly led the NFL in forced punts - 92. Second only to the Broncos. So if you're a cardinals fan I hope you liked punts because boy oh boy did you get to see a lot of them. The Giants got 1648 yards of Kickoff returning yardage. Their total offensive yardage was 5687 for the year. Thank god they didn't play that wilson kid much. The Giants also somehow allowed the most kickoff return yardage - 1662 thereof holding the rare position of both giving up and getting the most yards in kickoffs. Essentially wiping och the fantastic year their return team had. The Bills gave up the most return yards/punt and also had the highest yards/punt. Go CJ Spiller, go apparently terrible coverage teams. The Packers made only 63.6% of their Field Goal attempts this season. Somehow in a reversal of the ~Cowboys Kicker Curse~ Dallas made 93.5% When you think "red zone issues" the following teams should probably come to mind. The 49ers, the Giants, and then Falcons/Vikings/Texans. Interestingly enough, the 49ers were also terrible at FG kicking this year in addition to attempting the most field goals. Not a good combo. 
adaz fucked around with this message at Jan 22, 2013 around 18:51 |
| # ? Jan 22, 2013 18:47 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 14:10 |
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The Texans special teams were atrocious this year. Not just the penalties but the return game was pretty blah at best, and very bad at worst. Bryan Braman had one nice blocked kick that he got a TD on, so that made it only atrocious and not  But even he had a lovely year overall outside of that, was not consistent in keeping his lane assignment on returns and generally sucked.Our kicking game in general was very blah too, but that's no surprise and it's why Shayne Graham wasn't supposed to be our starter anyway.
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 19:46 |
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Zastudil had a really good year though. Breaking the record for punts inside the 20, and having your career best punt and Y/P. And he's 5 years younger than Ben Graham, so that's nice.
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 21:24 |
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adaz posted:Worst: Chicago, 19.8 yards And people criticized Bears fans for turning on Hester this year.
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 21:28 |
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No Safe Word posted:The Texans special teams were atrocious this year. Not just the penalties but the return game was pretty blah at best, and very bad at worst. Bryan Braman had one nice blocked kick that he got a TD on, so that made it only atrocious and not
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 21:32 |
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adaz posted:Somehow in a reversal of the ~Cowboys Kicker Curse~ Dallas made 93.5% Dan Bailey is 61/68 over the past two seasons (89.7%) and yet the only thing people remember about him is being iced by Garrett  We also let Kai Forbath go last year, only to have him turn into a pretty good kicker for the Redskins. Good thing we just let our kicking coach go!
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 21:33 |
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DupaDupa posted:And people criticized Bears fans for turning on Hester this year. Yeah not only was he a really bad receiver - and Cutler pretty much just said gently caress him the last half of the season - it turns out he was a terrible return guy this year too. I wonder if he survives the regime change, not sure on his contract status.
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 22:41 |
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adaz posted:Yeah not only was he a really bad receiver - and Cutler pretty much just said gently caress him the last half of the season - it turns out he was a terrible return guy this year too. I wonder if he survives the regime change, not sure on his contract status. He's in the last year of a contract that almost certainly will get him cut / restructured. He's making a touch over $2m base + workout bonus along with up to $10m in a roster bonus, that has a bunch of qualifiers over playing time, that I have no idea where he falls.
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 22:43 |
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adaz posted:Yeah not only was he a really bad receiver - and Cutler pretty much just said gently caress him the last half of the season - it turns out he was a terrible return guy this year too. I wonder if he survives the regime change, not sure on his contract status. He's due a $10 million "deescalating" roster bonus this offseason, and 2013 is the last year on his deal. Nobody outside the Bears and Hester knows what the roster bonus deescalated to based on his performance - it's definitely not $10 million, but it's tough to say what it really is. I think without the roster bonus* his cap hit would be fairly low, but I'm not certain about that. Assuming the roster bonus is in any way significant, the only way he remains on the Bears is if his contract is restructured, if the team is even willing to do that. *: As a non-guaranteed bonus, I think the roster bonus would count toward this coming season's cap, and isn't prorated over the life of his contract. e: Should have refreshed the page more recently.
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 22:53 |
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Aside from the playoff game against Denver watching Baltimore's special teams this year was pretty cool. Last season it was completely awful. David Reed fell apart and Ladarius Webb would return punts. Webb was okay, he got one TD last season in the game against NYJ. However that was probably the only good special teams play of the 2011 season. It can't be repeated enough, Jacoby Jones has been a huge boost for not only the special teams unit, but the offense as well. He's had two "lol Jacoby" moments where he muffed a punt and the other was a faulty kickoff return against Denver. Other than that, he's been a great returner. The Denver game was pretty uncharacteristic when they let two fly by, but at least we came out of that game alive. Also Justin Tucker is awesome and an amazing kicker. We all knew Cundiff was as good as gone when Tucker drilled that 50 yarder in preseason week 3. Hopefully Baltimore can keep up the ST play in the Super Bowl and next season. I'd hate for the success of this season to be a one time thing.
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 22:59 |
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I absolutely refuse to believe there are that many teams worse than the Texans at special teams
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| # ? Jan 22, 2013 23:01 |
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Bears special teams this year took a huge step back and it was really depressing. Lovie loves playing the field position game and it still showed this year, dispite our abysmal special teams play we were still had the 4th best starting postition per drive on offense and the 8th best starting position per drive on defense (http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/drivestats) e- And actually starting field position was probably the reason that the Bears ST was rated so high, because as far as traditional stats go we were one of the worst teams in the league (well OK except for stopping punt returns, we only gave up 84 return yards the whole year, goddamn son) GNU Order fucked around with this message at Jan 24, 2013 around 15:53 |
| # ? Jan 24, 2013 15:39 |
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Intruder posted:I absolutely refuse to believe there are that many teams worse than the Texans at special teams Clearly you have not seen the Carolina Panthers. Clearly.
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| # ? Jan 24, 2013 15:55 |
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Maybe another Bears fan can correct me, but I feel like on kickoffs, the returners ran a lot of balls out from deep in the end zone. Of course this usually didn't pay off, and actually hurt the Bears because they wouldn't even make it back to the 20. I don't think those initial 5 yards or whatever the returner had to run count as part of the total return yards. I can't remember how many times I screamed at the TV when Hester decided to take a ball out from 8 yards deep and get tackled short of the 20.
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| # ? Jan 24, 2013 16:26 |
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I knew our special teams was horrendous this year, but I had no idea we had 28 penalties 
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| # ? Jan 24, 2013 16:31 |
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Well I guess Oaklands Special Teams can only get better?
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| # ? Jan 24, 2013 16:35 |
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ff7cid posted:I knew our special teams was horrendous this year, but I had no idea we had 28 penalties I'm surprised it was that low. Every kick had a block in the back!
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| # ? Jan 24, 2013 16:39 |
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I had been operating under the assumption that the Jaguars kicking and punting game was really good and their gunners were simply putrid this year. Josh Scobee's 34/37 rate on 30+ yard kicks and Bryan Anger's 47.8 yards per punt average and only 5 touchbacks on 91 punts seemed pretty exemplary to me, but most of these indicators seem to pin the Jaguars kicking game towards the bottom of the league. Huh.
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| # ? Jan 26, 2013 03:16 |
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adaz posted:
God drat do I miss David Wilson.
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| # ? Jan 26, 2013 05:55 |
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Bengals special teams are amazing and they do it without a truly great returner (Pacman is just good to above average).
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| # ? Jan 26, 2013 16:13 |
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The way San Diego's special teams unit has improved over two seasons ago where they were the worst ST unit in league history is stunning. I'm very sad that we lost our ST coach to Dallas
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 19:20 |
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I have noticed the Vikings' special teams being much better than in years past, but I wasn't sure if it was because they were actually playing really well or just confirmation bias from having to watch their abysmal units from 2006-10
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 19:53 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 14:10 |
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kazil posted:Clearly you have not seen the Carolina Panthers. Clearly.
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| # ? Jan 28, 2013 06:36 |
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