Special Teams: Improvement a key to season

[Jason Svoboda]

Spent some more time with the Phil Steele mag last night and he has his own ranking system for special teams that takes into account several factors including net punting, kick return offense, kick return defense and the like. Last year, the Sycamores ranked 106th of 126 FCS teams -- he includes the provisional FCS schools in his rankings. Only one Valley team was worse, Youngstown State, which came in at 112th. Anyhow, if we expect this season to be better than the last, our special teams will need to be much improved.

The biggest glaring weakness was our kickoff return game which saw us have 40 kickoff returns for 606 yards. The 15.15 yards per return average was good for 114th of 117 teams. What's puzzling to me though is our punt returns came in 31st of 117 teams. So our punt returns were only 4 yards shy of our kickoff return average, 15.15 to 11.13 yards per return. I don't ever recall seeing a punt return average so close to a kickoff return average in my time following football.

The median for FCS teams were:
- Net Punting (33.3)
- Kick Return Offense (20.6)
- Punt Return Offense (8.8)
- Kick Return Defense (20.6)

Indiana State's 2010 averages:
- Net Punting (33.1)
- Kick Return Offense (15.2)
- Punt Return Offense (11.1)
- Kick Return Defense (20.8)

One last stat that Steele puts into his ranking is the BLK/TD index. Indiana State got a 0, which means we broke even when it came to blocking a kick or scoring on special teams compared to our opponents.

I will be very interested to see how our kickoff return game goes this year. Looking back to last year, I can remember some bad blocking in the kickoff return game so I'm hoping it is just a matter of correcting that to at least make that unit average. However, with some of the speed we have at the skill positions, that unit should be a strength. Thoughts?

 

[SupportTheSyc's]

Spent some more time with the Phil Steele mag last night and he has his own ranking system for special teams that takes into account several factors including net punting, kick return offense, kick return defense and the like. Last year, the Sycamores ranked 106th of 126 FCS teams -- he includes the provisional FCS schools in his rankings. Only one Valley team was worse, Youngstown State, which came in at 112th. Anyhow, if we expect this season to be better than the last, our special teams will need to be much improved.

The biggest glaring weakness was our kickoff return game which saw us have 40 kickoff returns for 606 yards. The 15.15 yards per return average was good for 114th of 117 teams. What's puzzling to me though is our punt returns came in 31st of 117 teams. So our punt returns were only 4 yards shy of our kickoff return average, 15.15 to 11.13 yards per return. I don't ever recall seeing a punt return average so close to a kickoff return average in my time following football.

The median for FCS teams were:
- Net Punting (33.3)
- Kick Return Offense (20.6)
- Punt Return Offense (8.8)
- Kick Return Defense (20.6)

Indiana State's 2010 averages:
- Net Punting (33.1)
- Kick Return Offense (15.2)
- Punt Return Offense (11.1)
- Kick Return Defense (20.8)

One last stat that Steele puts into his ranking is the BLK/TD index. Indiana State got a 0, which means we broke even when it came to blocking a kick or scoring on special teams compared to our opponents.

I will be very interested to see how our kickoff return game goes this year. Looking back to last year, I can remember some bad blocking in the kickoff return game so I'm hoping it is just a matter of correcting that to at least make that unit average. However, with some of the speed we have at the skill positions, that unit should be a strength. Thoughts?

You have to wonder if/when the NFL kick-off rule is considered at the college level...my guess is those discussions have already started. At minimum making the KO team line up 5 yards off of the ball would be the first step?

 

[Jason Svoboda]

You have to wonder if/when the NFL kick-off rule is considered at the college level...my guess is those discussions have already started. At minimum making the KO team line up 5 yards off of the ball would be the first step?

It all flows down hill at some point, no?

Back to our issue though, I think it is just more of a case that guys missed responsibilities. As long as each guy knows their role and puts a hat on someone, our kickoff returns will get better. Giving the offense (and the defense) better field position will only make this team even better.

 

[sycamores2]

A part of the kick return average could e how far the opposign teams kickoffs were, if the kicks were short then our returners have less room to run before they meet the opposing team. Only a small part but a part of it non the less.

 

[new sycamore fan]

That was definitely not the case; most of the issue was us starting drives at our own 15-20 and the other team starting drives from the 40+. Hard to tell if there is improvement in today's scrimmage because the coverage wasn't live. Riston runs vertical at least, which is promising.

 

[Jason Svoboda]

That was definitely not the case; most of the issue was us starting drives at our own 15-20 and the other team starting drives from the 40+. Hard to tell if there is improvement in today's scrimmage because the coverage wasn't live. Riston runs vertical at least, which is promising.

Yeah, I wish Steele's mag had the average starting field position, but it wasn't great. There were plenty of times we started inside our own 20 last year. I'd imagine you were spot on.