Zoltan and the Rugby Punt
With all the negativity flowing through the message boards these days, I thought it would be a good time to focus on something positive--Zoltan's mind bullets of awesomeness. This season, we're 2nd in the NCAA in net punting, averaging 43.08 yards per exchange. As I contemplated the omnipotence of our space emporer, I got curious as to how the new rugby punt was influencing our stats, so I did a little digging through the NCAA archives:
2006: 57th in net punting, 39.72 avg yards per punt, 34.92 net yards
2007: 48th in net punting, 41.10 avg yards per punt, 35.87 net yards
2008: 2nd in net punting, 44.98 avg yards per punt, 43.08 net yards
Unsuprisingly, we see an increase in the number of yards Zoltan is kicking the ball as he progresses throughout his career. However, the BIG increase is in the net yards, which means opponents are averaging fewer yards per return. In 2006, oponnents averaged 4.8 yards per return, in 2007, 5.23 yards per return, and in 2008, 1.9 yards per return.
I'm a huge fan of the rugby punt, because it does 2 things:
- It allows you to show a potential fake on every punt, and take it if it's there, as we did in the ND game
- Because the return team must defend the potential fake on every play, they can't sell out on the block or protect the return as much
I believe our large net punting increase is the cause of both our new style and Zoltan's mind bullets. Even the increase in raw kicking distance could be the result of more punts that roll because the returner can't make a play thanks to the increased time for the gunners to get downfield.
Of course, this is much too tiny of a sample size to make any real conclusions. If there was a listing of teams that have used the rugby punt over the past few years we could do some real analysis to assess its effectiveness. One caveat of the above numbers is that we don't do the roll-out rugby punt on every punt, so maybe the improvement is due simply to Zoltan Himself. Thoughts?
October 16th, 2008 at 10:46 PM ^
and net yards (about 5 yards in each of '06 and '07, less than 2 yards this year even though the punts are traveling almost 4 yards further). This shows that there have been virtually no return yards this year. With an offense that has been struggling to get yards, this has got to be particularly welcome.
I like the rugby punt because it forces the return team to respect the fake every punt, and if they don't, Mesko will go for it. I guess it fits in with the philosophy that is the basis of the spread-option offense; we now have a "punt-option" on the special teams.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:27 PM ^
October 17th, 2008 at 1:10 AM ^
- He kicks it low
- The delay of the rugby punt allows the defense to get down the field, so the returner can't safely field the bouncing punt
October 16th, 2008 at 11:41 PM ^
October 17th, 2008 at 12:16 AM ^
He is a Senior in the Bschool (but he redshirted and has an extra year of football left). Given the conditions of the job market, yeah, I think he will come back for the 5th year.
:-)
October 17th, 2008 at 2:42 AM ^
October 17th, 2008 at 9:01 AM ^
October 17th, 2008 at 9:41 AM ^
October 17th, 2008 at 10:35 AM ^
October 17th, 2008 at 10:42 AM ^
October 17th, 2008 at 10:43 AM ^
October 17th, 2008 at 11:09 AM ^
October 17th, 2008 at 11:57 AM ^
October 17th, 2008 at 1:05 PM ^
That certainly could be part of it, which is why it would be nice to analyze some other teams that use the rugby punt. However, I'm not certain this has a big effect with our offense because, true, we go 3 and out a lot, but we've been going 3 and out from excellent field position as well (such as in the Toledo game, where we were constantly pinning them deep on our punts), so zoltan has done a fair bit of pinning deep.
Even if it is true that we've been kicking from our own side the of field more often, you would expect we'd be giving up more return yards since we're kicking it deeper--but that's not the case, which I think is the result of the rugby punt.
Comments