So I kind of misunderstood a direction by Brian when I said I wanted to address special teams—he wanted stats on dinosaur punting and I thought he meant UFR all the things he doesn't.

What sparked my interest was coffin corner kicking. NCAA moved the kickoff spot to the 35 and made touchbacks start on the 25 as in incentive to cut down on kickoff return (and ensuing concussions). Inadvertently (or maybe not) they took away the advantage gained by teams with big-legged touchback machines. To regain that advantage, schools that can recruit kickers are teaching them to put the ball higher and in a spot where returners have to field it but are likely to be swallowed short of the 25 after they do.

D-E-D zone.

Against CMU I noticed Wile seemed particularly good at placing balls right in that deep left corner, the same thing I've done on every football videogame ever once I mastered the timing of the kickoff bar. This seems very hard to do in real life: you need to put the ball high enough to let your coverage get there but not deep enough that they let it go through the end zone, and far enough from the sideline that it won't go out of bounds, but far enough inside of the hash that you can use the sideline as a force defender. Do it well consistently and that's perhaps 50 yards of field position a game.

It's my first time UFR'ing these so gonna have to set some ground rules:

Points: Number of points given out reflects where the play ended up, figuring 1 point roughly equals 5 yards of field position, baseline: 25 yard line.

Glossary: The "From" column is where the kick originated, given as yard line then horizontal position ("L"=left hash, etc.). "Rtn" (return) is how far the returner ran it, "Rlt" (result) is where the ball's placed. "Tchbk" (touchback) means it's on the 25. "Corner L" means they kicked it from the left hash and try to have it come down near the goal line and relatively near the sideline; "Deep L" means they just kicked it deep along the hash mark. "Center" means they kick it toward the middle and come down the same.

Things: Note that Michigan typically kicks off from the left hash despite their right-footed kicker.

Okay, got a UFR macro reverse-engineered in Xcel. Got some torrents. Got a…oh, bolded, chart-demanding subconscious, you there?

Present.

Okay let's do this.

[After the jump]

I can't believe you got me out of bed just to talk about kickoffs.

Sorry.

Do you have anything to show from this?

Well I could make a—

Chart?

Was gonna say a Wilechart.

Epsteinchart!

Neinbergchart.

Feelychart!

Brabbschart!

BryanWrightwasusefulatsomethingchart!

Nailed it. BryanWrightwasusefulatsomethingchart:

"DO" is dead on—that kick has instantly reduced the opponent's likely starting position by 10 or more yards. "Good" gives the coverage a good shot to stop it short of the 25. "Boot" means he kicked a should-be touchback—I put those he seemed to be purposefully whacking in parentheses. "IN" is inaccurate—kicking out of bounds or shorting it so that the returner is set up to get beyond the 25. "Pin Srt" (Pin success rate) tracks just the coffin-corner attempts and how many ended up either longed or accurate enough to give the coverage a chance to pin them.

As you can see I made a distinction between aiming for the videogame kick and having it go long versus when Wile ran up and thwacked it as hard as he could, which attempts are charted in parentheses. Michigan practiced it a lot in the CMU game, brought it out in the 2nd half of the ND game, and continued using it against Akron and UConn except when kicking into a strong headwind.

So far the gambit has just over a 25% fail rate. Really to judge whether it's worth continuing we need to look at how the coverage has done at converting Wile's kickoffs into field position. Coveragechart:

Live I thought Gedeon and Stribling were always around the ball; Jourdan Lewis and Dymonte Thomas were getting down there quickly but often did bad things once they arrived. Competition applies: all the big negatives were things that let Notre Dame escape, and a lot of that has to do with Atkinson versus CMU-Akron-UConn returner du jour.

Wile!?

Having a kicker who can do this regularly:

…is a nice weapon. Downside is balls potentially going out of bounds and more returns increases the likelihood one gets broken on you. Upside is you can kill a drive by starting it at the 15—where coaches tend to get more conservative—and when you miss more often than not the result is the same thing you might have gotten if you just booted it. Do not attempt in high winds.

Tomorrow: ALL THE NORFLEET!