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I was looking at "Touchbacks percentage" on kickoffs. At first I was surprised that MacPherson was only 13th in the league. I assumed he had the leg to kick it deep into or even out of the endzone everytime. Then I saw that Justin Tucker was 20th.
I realized that teams are actually trying to avoid touchbacks on kick offs. Instead they want high hanging kicks inside the 10.
There is a stat for teams "starting field position" but it includes every drive instead of just kickoffs. Seems like there should be a stat like that to rank both kicking and return teams.
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(04-14-2022, 04:27 PM)fredtoast Wrote: I was looking at "Touchbacks percentage" on kickoffs. At first I was surprised that MacPherson was only 13th in the league. I assumed he had the leg to kick it deep into or even out of the endzone everytime. Then I saw that Justin Tucker was 20th.
I realized that teams are actually trying to avoid touchbacks on kick offs. Instead they want high hanging kicks inside the 10.
There is a stat for teams "starting field position" but it includes every drive instead of just kickoffs. Seems like there should be a stat like that to rank both kicking and return teams.
More finesse on kickoffs is one of Darrin Simmons's areas of focus for McPherson heading into year 2. Darrin believes this is an area that needs improvement. And it was for both situations...a kick that should be a touchback that wasn't and a short kick that went too long
Winning makes believers of us all
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A lot of people used to complain that Fat Randy didn't have the leg to bury kickoffs, but I always thought he was just being told to let them bring it out and then try to stop them at the 15-20 instead of just giving them the 25.
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(04-15-2022, 08:24 AM)Sled21 Wrote: A lot of people used to complain that Fat Randy didn't have the leg to bury kickoffs, but I always thought he was just being told to let them bring it out and then try to stop them at the 15-20 instead of just giving them the 25.
By the same token sometimes it looks like an obvious mistake when a return man takes one back from deep in the end zone, but they are taught to count from the kickoff (hang time). If the ball gets to them quick enough then they can return it even if they are deep in the end zone.
I think Brandon Tate used to get excited and count too fast.
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I bet there's more than a few Buffalo Bills' fans wish their kicker had used a little more "finesse" on one particular kickoff.