Wow. That’s 180 degrees wrong. :rolleyes:
Well that makes sense. Obviously the fair catch rule would be used almost every time in Rugby League if it existed. Unfortunately it doesn’t, neither does blocking, so if you are the fullback standing still under a kick that has gone almost straight up in the air, usually without a spiral so it will be harder to catch, you don’t look at the big, big guys running flat out toward you, you just watch the ball and hope for the best.
If you could just call a fair catch and take it at your leisure that would be the only option ever taken.
I’m sure it’s completely evident now, but that’s why the rule was instituted.
Aussies like bloodshed.
Of course you would. Bunch of criminals.
Using the 42 yard average distance and the dimensions of the field, the distance a punter would get if he kicked it out of bounds perfectly is between 32 and 35 yards, depending on how close to the hash mark he is. That’s about the average net punting yards.
Assuming he lined it up perfectly so that the kick hit the sideline, sure. But it’s awfully difficult to punt with that kind of accuracy. If you want to be sure the ball goes out of bounds, you’ll err to the out-of-bounds side of the kick, and probably cut 5-10 yards off your average, taking it down to 25-30 yards.
Without pushing the kick toward the sideline, you run the risk of landing it in play, at which point you’re only helping your opponent by giving him the better field position that comes with a short kick, plus a chance to return the punt for even better position. Unless you’ve got an incredibly accurate punter, that’s a losing proposition.
I can appreciate this argument, however I can’t get past one unassailable fact: Punts out of bounds have exactly a ZERO percent chance of getting returned for touchdowns. Regardless of what stats you want to throw at me about field position, football is a game of points, and if one strategy guarantees that, at the very least, I get to put my defense on the field and stop them from scoring, I just don’t see how you can get around that. If I told you at the beginning of the season that I can guarantee we won’t give up a punt return for a touchdown, that has to help the team out for the season, right?
I’m not so sure I agree with this. Even if you screw up and just pin the receiver on the sideline, sure it is shorter but I imagine it must be much easier to defend a return from a kick that lands near a sideline, simply because the receiver has less real estate to maneuver in.
Punt return touchdowns are far more rare than you seem to think. In the 2007 season to date, there have been 1586 punts. 13 have been returned for TDs - about 0.8%. If you’re really bound and determined to play the numbers, you’re going to kick away.
If you punt the ball 125 times, statistics say that you’ll give up 1 return TD. The average punt in the NFL this year is 43.8 yards, with a 9.5 yard average return. You lose 5 yards off of the punt by simple trig - the sideline is 20 yards from the closest hashmark; so you’re down to about 39 yards per punt. If you stop there, though, probably half your punts will land in bounds; you don’t want that, so take another 10 yards off the average to make sure nothing lands in bounds. With those assumptions, you’re looking at about 30 yards per punt out of bounds.
Compare that the NFL average of 34.3 net yards. That 4.3 yards might not seem like that much, but it’s 538 yards of field position over 125 punts. Do you really want to give up that much ground to avoid one score?
That’s a simplistic analysis, of course - punt returns depend greatly on the returner and the kick coverage. But I think it shows why coaches don’t do this as a matter of course. If I were punting to Devin Hester, I’d kick the ball out of bounds every time. But with any other team in the league, I’d take my chances covering it.
Not necessarily. The returner has less room to maneuver, but you’ve got fewer guys to cover the territory as well. You can angle your coverage toward the sideline, but you’ve still got to have guys in their lanes in case the returner gets by the first few defenders. Take a look at a few punt return highlights - you’ll see guys racing up the sideline almost as often as you see them in the open field.
Would you accept a 1 yard net punting average? Is it better to give up roughly 40 yards of field position with each punt to guarantee there will be no touchdowns?
No, of course not, so it’s a continuum. Most teams decide that risking the occasional big return is worth not giving up field position consistently.
Gah… the NFL net average isn’t 34.3 yards - I didn’t include fair catches (not counted as a return) in the calculation. Net average for 2007 is 39.1.
So you’re giving up more than 1100 yards to avoid one TD. I just don’t see the benefit to kicking out of bounds every time.
I’m going to get to your other more salient points tomorrow when I have more time to think about them, but I have to object to this. Sure you see plenty of guys racing up the sideline AFTER starting in the middle and making cuts that wind up putting them on the sideline, but you almost NEVER see a receiver catch the ball within 5 yards of a sideline and take it to the house.
This comes up in MAS*H (the novel) in the 4077th’s football game - they’re trying to get the opponents’ ringer invalided out of the game and they put up a punt for him to catch so they can smoosh him, but he calls for a fair catch. So they have to nail him later on a running play.
Can’t speak for Rugby League, but in Union we have a rough equivalent, the “mark”. Difference is that you can’t signal it in advance and be unmolested as you catch the ball, you have to call it as you make the catch. The catcher may be tackled anyway but the whistle is blown almost instantly, so the kicking side would be penalised for a late tackle if it was blatant, and the reward for a successful is a free kick from the place where it is made (which must be behind your own 22-metre line).
My new term for bullishly doing something retarded even though you know it is wrong is “kicking to Devin Hestor”.
“Honey, you know that that dry cleaner always loses your shirts, and the other one is only 1 minute further away.”
“Fuck it, I’m kicking to Devin Hestor.”
I point out that not only do you stand to lose some net yards by punting out of bounds, you also lose your chance of making the returner fumble the ball. Sure, there is a .8% chance of a return for a touchdown(this season), but what are the chances of a fumble that the punting team gets? I can’t find any team stats on this. It seems that any forced fumbles and fumble recoveries are added to the defensive stats. However, I used Yahoo Sports to go through and look at the return stats of each teams leading punt returners(not including defensive players, it is very hard to find return stats for players that are considered defensive even if the majority of their playing time is returning the ball) and found 10 lost fumbles on returns and about 3 times that many fumbles that weren’t recovered by the punting team. I will admit that some of those fumbles could have come on kick returns, but I don’t know how many. I must say that punting to guys like Devin Hester and Nate Burleson is generally a bad idea. But punting to most returners gives you a decent chance at getting the ball back, at least as good a chance as the punt being returned for a touchdown.
Sauerbrauns brash talk aside, is it really up to the punter whether they will kick to the returner or not? I would think that would be a coaches decision.
Wasn’t the Devin Hester TD off of a kick-off (not a punt)? If facing Devin Hester, why not kick it through the end-zone instead of out of bounds? Field goal kickers routinely nail 50-yarders these days. I’d think it’s possible to regularly line drive a kick-off 70 or 80 yards.
I’m stealing this.