Projecting The Patriots Special Teams In 2014
- Thread starter IdiotKicker
- Start date
soxfan121 said:
Most teams do, and I have a feeling that most advanced statistical sites do as well, but none of that data is made public. Since I have some extra time this year, I'm building my own database, but it'll take probably half a season for the data to be at least somewhat meaningful.
soxfan121 said:
Well it's actually a little more complicated than that. Let's look atthe last Pats game. Allen had 5 successful punts, which is something I shouldn't even have to type. On those 5 punts, he averaged 4.1 seconds of hangtime per kick. But it's not like this is something that is repeatable every time a punter goes out to punt. In particular, his fourth kick, if you look at the basic stats, was a great kick. It went 62 yards and had no return. But in reality, it only had 3.7 seconds of hangtime, bounced after traveling 40 yards, and covered the rest of the distance hopping along the ground because the returner was so deep from his previous 63-yard punt. So if I were grading Allen on that kick, I'd probably give him a minus rating because it wasn't actually a good kick.
For NFL punters, you want to average over 4.25s for hangtime. Ideally, over 4.5s and getting towards 5 is where you want to be. Allen had two kicks in the 4.8s range last week, but then he also shanked his second kick off the side of his foot and ended up with a 3.3s, and had a couple others in the 3.7-3.8s range. It's really all about trying to get consistency, and I haven't even started talking about the field position of where a punter is kicking from or directional kicking.