On punting

by Ryan Van Bibber on Jun 25, 2008 8:29 AM CDT in Preseason

I don't know why I'm stuck on special teams lately. Chalk it up to offseason fatigue I guess, partly. The subject of punting came up yesterday while I was talking to a friend about the Rams upgrades this offseason. Somehow, the conversation segued into last offseason and which addition made the biggest impact.

Oh, as a Rams fan, I offered the usual names, Carriker, Ryan, yada, yada, yada. My friend, a Chiefs fan, said Donnie Jones, the free agent punter the Rams brought in from Miami last spring. Touche. He had me.

The Rams sure did punt a lot last season, or so it seemed with the offense firing on just two cylinders all year. League rank in parentheses.

	Avg	# of punts	Long	DVOA
2006	37.8 (9)	75 (22)	74 (2)	0.0
2007	39.3 (4)	78 (11)	80 (2)	3.3

The Rams didn't punt that much more often this season than they did last season, but compared with the league trend though, they punted quite a bit in 2007. As for Jones, you can see his impact in the average yards per punt and the longest punt. Interesting aside, the longest punt in 2006 was just 75 yards. And of course, DVOA for the Rams punting unit, which mostly measures yardage confirms the improvement.

Punting's not the first thing that comes to mind with thinking about the 3 win Rams of 2007. Well, actually, maybe it works as a symbol: fans punted their season tickets and the season, players almost punted, the management punted a lot of the coaches....well, you get it. The improvement on the punting unit doubtlessly saved the Rams even more heartache last season.

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pooch punts

A couple of things,

I’m getting different stats than you. Donnie Jones’ net avg. punt last year was 39.3, but I see him T7 (see here) . Also, for total punts, with 78 I have him T10. It’s such a huge difference between being tied for 10th and being 11th in a punting category.

The percentage of his punts that were spotted inside the 20 was 23.1%, the second worst in the league. I have a couple thought as to why, but unless we want to jump into a deep punting analysis, I won’t go there. Something worth noting and bearing in mind this year (and preseason).

Do we need to have a conversation about Chris Massey (ESPN’s “Classy Massey” profile here) and the value of having a dedicated long snapper hold a roster spot? There are valid arguments for both sides and I lean specifically towards one, but I wonder if we should bring this up going into this season, as it will be Chris’ 7th with the Rams. I wonder where fans stand on this or even if they know who Massey is….and if they don’t know him, what that says about how good of a long snapper he is…

by 3k on Jun 26, 2008 6:50 AM CDT reply actions