Changing gears to look at specific parts of the program, what is our philosophy on Special Teams? I know we all bemoan the fact that we play Ray Guy every week while our punter typically manages about 30 yards per punt. We’ve had some pretty good kickers and also struggled there. Our return game is usually non existent, etc.
So I took a look to see if what I’m actually thinking matched reality or I’m just being a whiny fan. ST is a really hard thing to quantify so I just went to FPI rankings to get a gauge. Here are our rankings over the last decade plus this year so far:
2023 - 130th
2022 - 71st
2021 - 18th
2020 - 89th
2019 - 114th
2018 - 125th
2017 - 84th
2016 - 76th
2015 - 126th
2014 - 121st
2013 - 88th
Average - 95th
Yuck. Do we need to have someone on staff whose sole purpose is dedicated to ST? Someone more in the know, is this something Dabo cares about? From the outside it looks like he’s just more concerned about not making a mistake there (i.e. lots of “punt safe” formations, either letting balls roll on punts or always fair catching it, etc) than making it a weapon.
How do we improve here?
So I took a look to see if what I’m actually thinking matched reality or I’m just being a whiny fan. ST is a really hard thing to quantify so I just went to FPI rankings to get a gauge. Here are our rankings over the last decade plus this year so far:
2023 - 130th
2022 - 71st
2021 - 18th
2020 - 89th
2019 - 114th
2018 - 125th
2017 - 84th
2016 - 76th
2015 - 126th
2014 - 121st
2013 - 88th
Average - 95th
Yuck. Do we need to have someone on staff whose sole purpose is dedicated to ST? Someone more in the know, is this something Dabo cares about? From the outside it looks like he’s just more concerned about not making a mistake there (i.e. lots of “punt safe” formations, either letting balls roll on punts or always fair catching it, etc) than making it a weapon.
How do we improve here?
