Maybe the biggest thing I'm disappointed about this season is that our STs, as a whole (Zoltan aside), do not seem improved at all from Carr's. We've been noticeably worse than OSU and PSU (and even MSU) in recent years in this area. They seem to get at least one KOR TD and one PR TD a season, cover pretty well, and block an occasional kick/punt. We've scored exactly one TD on a KOR since 1995, and have had great difficulty getting beyond the 30 (the Rose Bowl against Texas notwithstanding). We also tend not to have any kind of a functional punt return unit when Steve Breaston isn't our returner, and we were unable to block a single punt in Carr's last 4-5 seasons.
We finally did block a punt against Utah and I hoped that that would be a sign of things to come, but aside from that one play, we look as sloppy and ineffective on punt returns and kickoffs (both ways) as we did under the previous regime. Someone suggested earlier that RR hasn't been able to spend as much time as he'd like on STs because the offense has needed so much attention. I hope that's true because right now, outside of our excellent punting, we're really failing to capitalize on this part of the game. STs basically were the reason our 2001 team stayed bowl eligible (we blocked a crazy number of punts that year) despite having a hideous offense. It's too bad we can't duplicate that now.
I mentioned this briefly in another post but it would be nice to figure out who will be returning KO's. We have a new return man every game. Maybe even more importantly is that the blocking has stunk.