It's August 31, 2013, and the Georgia Dome is roaring as Virginia Tech opens the season against No. 1 Alabama. After picking up just a yard on three downs, the Hokie punt team lines up at their own 18-yard line. A.J. Hughes takes the snap and launches a booming 54-yard punt straight up the field, landing in the waiting hands of Christion Jones a moment before the coverage can get to him. A moment is all he needs as he makes a couple of defenders miss in open space and takes the kick 72-yards for a touchdown.
For David to knock off Goliath, a special teams breakdown was a huge hole to climb out of just two minutes into a game.
To the casual fan, the deep punt by A.J. well into Alabama territory was a thing of beauty, while the inability of the coverage to make a tackle was gut-wrenching. But punting is much more complex than simply kicking the ball as far down field as possible, and few coaches would judge a punter simply by his average yards per punt.
However, that's exactly what fans are doing as they continue to look at A.J.'s punting numbers and question whether one of the best punters in the country has actually regressed this season. So has he? To answer the question, one has to look at more than just punting distance, which shows a clear drop-off from 2013 to 2014:
A drop-off of 2.5 yards in 2013 would have been the difference between being the No. 14 punter nationally by distance and No. 50. Additionally, over the course of a season, that's giving up almost 200 yards of field position.
Except it isn't.
A punter's job usually is not to kick as far as possible, but to kick as far as possible while giving the coverage team enough time to get to the returner. Christion Jones did not return a punt 72 yards simply because Tech is inept at tackling, but at least partly because that beautiful booming punt gave him a chance to start running before the first two tacklers could wrap him up. The goal of a punt is not to kick the ball as far as possible, but rather to push the opponent's starting field position as far back as possible: therefore both the punt and the return must be considered.
For punts that were returned, the return distance by year is below:
Quite a substantial difference...even if the two outliers from 2013 are removed, opposing teams are getting much less out of returns. In fact, Virginia Tech has moved from the 107th lowest opposing punt return average in 2013 to the 13th this season.
Furthermore, the result of every punt can be broken down by season:
There are three substantial differences thus far in 2014:
- The percentage of punts that are returned have dropped from 43.6% to 36.5%. If you don't want Christion Jones to return your punt for a touchdown, try to not let him return it at all.
- The percentage of punts that result in touchbacks has dropped from 10.3% to 3.8%. There is a huge field position advantage in getting the ball at the 20 as opposed to inside the 5.
- The percentage of punts that are downed by the Hokies has risen from 15.4% to 25%. A downed punt means there was no return, and more often than not additional yards were gained on the roll.
Putting it all together, we can look at the net field position difference (the distance from the line of scrimmage on the punt to the where the ball is downed, a touchdown is scored, or the returner fumbles) on all punts in 2013 to 2014 to gauge the effectiveness of A.J.'s punts:
So despite losing 2.5 yards on the punt itself, Tech is actually gaining an additional two yards of field position on punts this season. And THAT is the goal of the punt.
Myth: Busted.
Comments
I don't know how you have the time for all the stat work you do, but I quite enjoy it. thanks, this was very interesting
Thanks! I wish I had more time for it.
What data viz you running there? Tableau?
All graphs were produced in Minitab 17
It seems one would also have to gauge the field position when punting in order to also accurately reflect the effectiveness of a punt. For example - punting from your opponent's 45 yd line would reflect a higher probability of a touchback or no return than punting from your own 25 yd line. Very interesting numbers, though. Thanks!
I actually have these numbers but felt like the article might start getting too long or complicated...here is the net punt distance based on starting yard line:
With so much variation, it is hard to say much about those quadratic fits...it does appear that limiting touchbacks and increasing downed punts is gaining more yardage on punts from opposing territory.
Biggest comment on this which is not related to AJ's foot: I see about 11 punts from inside our own 15 so far this season. Last year? 1. I know that speaks more to offensive regression than the performance of our punter, but we seem to be putting AJ in a shitty position a HELLuva lot more than we did last year. AJ was wearing a dirt spot in the back of the end zone against BC last week.
Yep - For some numbers:
2013: 0 punts from back line of end zone
2014: 6 already
2013: 3 punts from a line of scrimmage at or inside our own 15 out of 78 (<4%)
2014: 13 out of 53 (24.5%)
Thanks, Joel.
I've been trying to explain that without visual aids for a few games now.
Now if I could only not look like a weirdo pulling out copies of this at the games.
If you find a way to pull out graphs and stats to strangers without looking like a weirdo, I'm very interested for, um, a friend.
it just depends on who you sit with. I mean, we are virginia tech after all. A good percentage of our fans are engineers, right?
I concur. If I saw someone pulling out stats and graphs during the game, I'd try to sit near them every time.
Hokies gonna polytech. You're nerdiness should be lauded!
Great job! This is ideal for punters pursuing the NFL as well. NFL prefers hang-time + a 40-45 yard punt in order to draw a fair catch.
You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. I love me some numbers crunching.
The only problem is that we need to stop forcing AJ to kick from our endzone. We may be minimizing returns, but we can't continue to give them the ball between our 40 and the 50 while the opposing team continues to drop punts at our 1 yard line. That's not an AJ problem though, that's an offense problem since we often move from the 1 yard line up to the 3 and then punt.
Yes! I put on Twitter yesterday and you can see that in the graph in my comment above. Punters typically line up about 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage, so any time the line is within your own 5-yard line the punter has less space to work with than they are used to. This year AJ has punted 6 times already with this limited space...last year was 0 and we never even had to punt from within our own 10. A Logandozer helps with that.
I am constantly impressed but also discouraged by the number of times other teams have pinned us inside our 5. If anything is the biggest hindrance to our offensive performance, it's having our backs against the end zone and having to work our way out of it. It seems that every game though, at least 2 punts get downed between the 1 and 3. Granted, against BC the wind hurt. They could more or less march downfield in a quarter just by exchanging punts. With the wind, their punt may sail 50+ yards, against the wind, ours goes less than 40. Already, they've gained at least 10 yards and their offense did absolutely nothing. More or less, their offense could get a quick break while the defense forced a 3 and out and then come out with what equated to a first down extension from the last drive.
FEI rates field position advantage for every team at http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/fpa2014, and we are 75th in the country. Not good.
Our opponents start, on average, with a 5.4-yard advantage per drive which is 117th in the country. And if you think we get pinned deep to often you're dead on - 123rd in the country in % of drives started inside our own 20. There are 128 D-1A teams.
I'd imagine we're likely 128th in % of drives starting inside our own 5.
probably making a run at it after this past week I'd guess
It looks like we had slight a starting field position advantage, 1.5yds (44th). I'm guessing this is what people are interpreting as regression in the punting game (which is what really was being analyzed here). The punt game has improved by 2.5 yds, but the SFP has regressed by 7yds...it sounds like the real culprit here is the return game?
I would guess...we're 107th in the country in kick return efficiency and without the data I would guess that far more often than not when we return kicks from inside the end zone we don't make it to the 25 or even the 20.
I think what's killing us here (and has been for several years now, it seems) is penalties on kick/punt returns. Perhaps for your next research project, you could see how many of our returns are called back for block in the back penalties. I don't have the data to back this up, but it sure feels like at least half of our decent/good kick returns (let's say 15 yards or more for punt returns and out to the 25 or better for kick returns) get negated due to flags on the return team. I honestly can't remember the last time we went a whole game without one of those penalties. I've been waiting in vain to hear someone question Frank about this in a press conference or on Tech Talk Live. Makes me wonder if I'm the only one to notice this, or if it's all in my imagination.
I don't have data on punt returns, but on kick returns, we've only had 1 penalty this year. It was the opening kickoff vs BC where we returned the ball out of the endzone to the 10-yard line and got a block in the back one the play which gave us half the distance to start at the 5-yard line. There have definitely been several punt returns called back this year (although I'm not sure if it's more than average... no matter what game I'm watching, I'm almost always surprised when a punt return over 15 yards DOESN'T get called back).
It's definitely the punt returns that stand out more to me and that I'm more concerned about (from a penalty standpoint). I only included kickoff returns for the sake of thoroughness. Thanks for having an answer to that part. The number of positive kickoff returns is so small that it's likely statistically insignificant anyway.
Also, I'm glad I'm not the only one who's observed that we seem to get a lot of returns called back. Perhaps it's just because I watch a lot more Hokie football than other teams and I'm emotionally invested in the team, but it certainly feels to me like we get flagged on those a LOT more than our opponents or other teams do. It feels like it's been a problem for at least 4 or 5 years now.
Regarding kickoffs ...
Opponents have had 43 kickoffs this season, of which 29 reached the endzone.
Of those 29 kickoffs, 14 were touchbacks, and we returned 15. One was returned to the opponent 42-yard line. One was returned to our own 29-yard line. The other 13 were returned to the 20-yard line or less, including four which went to the 15-yard line or less.
Since a touchback is spotted at the 25-yard line, it means only 2 of 15 returns that were brought out of the endzone have yielded a positive result (i.e. were returned to the 25-yard line or further). This also means that for the season to date, when we bring a kickoff out of the endzone, we have been 2x as likely to start the drive inside our own 15 as outside the 25. All told, the 15 returns have yielded a net loss of 78 yards of free field position.
Thanks for the stats! This is an excellent breakdown.
It seems like our number of actual returns would be low. I'd think that roughly half of reutrns out of the end zone would be pretty low. Evidently, the opponents are busting through our KR team so quickly that we can't even get out of the end zone to a capable degree. It's quizzical.
I posted on a different topic earlier that we must be averaging about -8 yards per return that we bring out of the endzone. Your numbers seem to back that up. I was secretly hoping I was wrong and it just seemed that bad.
This is why I love TKP. Never thought I'd see an article analyzing punting. Awesome job joelestra. This at least makes me feel slightly better about our season.
I think any analysis of our kickers is incomplete without a breakdown of their finishing moves.
Slye has the spear which is obviously pretty devastating:
But AJ has a little something called "Three Ball Monty", and creates real game-changing moments like this one:
Kickers got Sam Rogers training from Sam himself!
I had forgotten about Slye's tackle there. I propose we call him "Raiden" from now on. Stopped that guy dead in his tracks.
I think the one glaring omission from my post is that I never discuss the lack of devastating, humiliating tackles and forced fumbles by AJ that the lack of a return will result in. Even if they get a 20 or 30 yard return I'd have to think that getting your returner dominated by the punter affects the morale of the whole team for the rest of the game.
I think it could also be argued that opposing teams simply don't try a return for fear of player safety in lieu of AJs devastating tackles
Upvotes:
Jamie Hyneman approves:
Awesome. Any idea how he ranks nationally in Net Yards of Punt Plays? What about compared to other popular punters (Nic Shmitt, for instance).
net punting is 29th this year, 78th last year I think
I tackled this looking at neutral (fair caught/downed) and negative yardage (returned/touchbacks)
the 2014 iteration of AJ Hughes is averaging approximately six punts per game, with one touchback every four and a half games, and just over one fair catch per game, with an average of 41.7 yards per kick but a net of 39.6, and a ridiculous 3.5 yards per return. 30 of his punts have been downed or fair caught, while 23 have resulted in returns or touchbacks.
now to put that into perspective.
Last year, 33 of 78 kicks were returned for 11.6 ypr, and 8 were into the endzone.
Brian Saunders' 2010 season saw better yardage per punt and better net yardage, but he only managed neutral punts 45% of the time.
2007 had Brett Bowden punt a Beamer-era record 88 times, with 54.54% having neutral results.
Schmitt's best season (only 9 more punts than AJ's current season) had 3 fewer returns, but 9 more touchbacks.
In Vinnie Burns' best year he was nearly 50-50 in negative to neutral punts.
Jimmy Kibble's 1999 season had the fewest punts in the Beamer-era (coincidence?) and with nearly 72% of those kicks resulting in neutral outcomes.
Why am I only allowed one upvote???
That's damn impressive for an 11 year old.
Yeah, while he may not have regressed, you would have to think that the staff had high hopes for him after showing so much potential at that age
Puberty, it'll really get after ya
Great post and great explanation! There has been definite improvement, not to mention I think the gunners have been playing lights out.
One additional stat that you did not show, which I think is important is number/percentage of punts downed inside the 20. You show that percentage of downed punts is up, and percentage of touchback is down. The percentage downed inside the 20 would shed light on how much of the ~7% decrease in touchbacks is due to downing punts inside the 20. Some of that decrease is likely due to punting from our side of the field more, where the end zone is out of reach.
This is definitely one area that CFB has been successful in this year!!
This might be a little hard to read but is hopefully helpful:
The problem with purely looking at % downed inside the 20 is that is lacks the context of how many were from a distance where it is reasonable to expect one to be downed inside the 20. This is important because we have punted from an average field position much farther back this season than last as you can tell from the graph hopefully. This year 11/17 punts that traveled to inside the 20 were downed, fair caught, or OOB and in 2013 that was 21/34 so basically the same.
From a field position perspective, however, only 3 times last year did we punt from inside our own 40 and end up downing the ball inside the opponent's 20 and we have done that 5 times already this year on fewer punts.
This website is just incredible. I have been very critical of Hughes this season. Clearly I was wrong to do so. AJ, Im sorry
AJ forgives you.
I never thought our punting has been an issue this year. We're not giving up the big gains we gave up in the past, and we're not giving up the scores we were.
Our problem is that our return game is sputtering. On kickoffs, we rarely even get it to the 20 when taking a knee in the end zone gets us to the 25. The sheer number of times we allowed punts to hit and roll against BC without even attempting a fair catch routinely put us behind the 8-ball and really impacted our chances to win. This part of our game HAS to get better. We desperately need a better starting field position. Nothing is more disheartening to start 3 or 4 drives in a row inside the 10 because we didn't have anyone there to fair catch at the 15-20 yard line. Took us completely out of our game.
Can you give the breakdown of punts downed inside the 20, 15, 10 and 5? Because that's the main issue in my mind. I feel like there have been a ton of opportunities to pin the opposing team deep, but he keeps kicking it to the 12 yard line, which sure is nice, but really not all that hindering to an offense.
The 100 on the y-axis of the graph posted above (that splits apart the result of every punt) is the opposing end zone so that should give some idea...the only thing missing is whether the ball bounced or rolled some of that distance or it was in the air. Of course you would generally assume that downed punts did bounce or roll while others usually did not (other than touchbacks, which often bounce or roll into the end zone before the coverage can get to them).
Also take the "punt from" into account since it's not reasonably to pin a team if you're deep in your own territory. One things that stands out is that in clear "pin them" field position, well into their territory, teams are far more often than last year choosing to fair catch between the 10 and 20 rather than avoid fumble risk and hope they don't get pinned.
Excellent work, joel (ty!)!
Any available data on how AJH compares to other punters at downing them inside the 5/10? it seems like that would also affect his avg punt distance...
Also, any stats available on hang time...that would be like the nail in the coffin for proving AJH's progress as opposed to regress.
FTFY.
Hang time would be awesome to have but either no one is collecting it for all college punters, or no one is sharing it. I've been unable to find it and look for it probably a couple of times per year.
Analysis COULD be done on pinning teams inside the 5 or 10 but there is plenty of context missing from that, most notably where the punter is punting from. It's not fair to compare a punter with a high percentage of punts coming from deep inside his own territory (see Hughes, AJ) with one who gets to punt from much further up field typically.
From the graph in my comment above, you can tell one thing: of 16 punts taken from our own 35 or beyond (the 35 yard line is 45 yards from the 20 so a reasonable cut off for where you should expect a good punter to get it to the 20 or past), only once has the ball been downed outside of the opposing 20 and only twice has it been a touchback. Given that the punter has only a little control over the likely bounce of the ball, that's pretty incredible. It's probably hoping for too much to want it inside the 10 or 5.
Good to see #PunterSwag is still going strong
Great analysis Joe. Net for punters is the Key! Key play that is!
#puntingiswinning
There is a distinct lack of C4 in this MythBusters!
But this data is great, I've been critical of AJ mainly because of how I've seen it coming off his foot, specifically not in a tight spiral like we saw last year. It would be interesting to get some film breakdown of his drop to see if that's been altered causing more wobble this year but this review is already more than I expected. If his kicks are staying in the air longer, coupled with the shorter distance that would be a good sign of improvement.
Excellent analysis Joe. Nothing like pictures to make a point perfectly clear. Thanks.
Not directed at you but in general, Joel wrote the article not Joe.
I think the confusion comes in as "Joe Lestra" vs. "Joel Estra". Folks aren't sure what the 'l' goes with.
But good golly, that's a frightening sight.
Great point; I never thought of that. I guess not everyone is a nerd and dug through the site to read his bio :).
I see it as one name, joelestra, and it makes me think he is somehow involved with making Olestra, that wonder oil that was supposed to make people not absorb the fat from frying potato chips and stuff but really gave people severe abdominal cramping and diarrhea. No metaphor intended, as I find his posts very factually nutritious.
You are correct in the combination of "Joel" and "Olestra", which the FDA originally required a warning with that read "This Product Contains Olestra. Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools. Olestra inhibits the absorption of some vitamins and other nutrients. Vitamins A, D, E, and K have been added"
But hey, less fat in your chips!
I, for one, am very glad that your columns don't have the same effect, though watching the Hokies this year has been awful for my heart...
joelestra, this post was so informative and did such a great job of picking out the facts that I had to hunt through and leg all of your replies. Way too many posts lately seem to be trashing all aspects of this team without any facts. Love the numbers, keep em coming!
Thanks! Other "Mythbusters" recommendations are always welcome as long as there is no associated expectation of time frame to completion.
Fat Frank vs. Skinny Frank and win percentage.
I'm sure there's no recorded data on it, but one I've heard before is
Myth: Playing Enter Sandman again during the game results in a loss.
It only happens during a critical time in a big game, so maybe look at our record in close home games vs ranked opponents?
The main time I remember was toward the end of the Thursday night BC game with Matt Ryan. The crowd went nuts...and we ended up losing.
GT this year also.
Don't forget Miami two years ago
I think it depends on the situation.
Miami, we were ahead with 5 seconds left, and it was essentially 4th and goal from the 50 for Miami. Basically, it was a point where we could beat on our chest and say "try us, we dare you."
GT...wow, I think I've already blocked that one out, but the game wasn't as sure of a thing at that point. Maybe we were only tied?
And that BC game, I missed most of it due to uncooperative co-workers. I got home just in time to see the first TD.
GT called timeout on 4th and 15 down by a touchdown with a couple minutes left, and that's when they played Sandman. If they didn't convert, we would have won for sure.
And that's what the difference was. Too much time on the clock. Whereas Miami only had one play.
Hughes has been our most consistent player for the last two seasons. It wasn't too long ago where 20 yard punts were the norm. Thankful we have AJ on our team. I don't have to hold my breath every time a 4th down comes up.
A good time to remind everyone that at one point Danny Coale was taking punts for us.
I totally forgot about that. Amazing in one regard that we were so poor at punting we needed a wide receiver to handle the duties for us. Amazing in another regard that Danny Coale was our best punter. Sure miss that guy!
You know, he caught that ball.
Not only that, but we 'supposedly' forced him to make a decision on a fake punt in a situation that we telegraphed from miles away, then blamed him for it not working out perfectly. Nothing like Danny having bus treadmarks all over his jersey while he was diving for that pass in the end zone. Wait... we're not supposed to remember that part, are we?
That timeout was the worse thing that Beamer could have taken. Then the entire team huddles up before a routine punt. Most of the reason that this years fake worked so well, was that it wasn't telegraphed at all.
Didn't he have the option to rugby punt if the fake wasn't open?
I've watched Hokie football for four decades. We have never done a rugby punt. So... Frank decided that it would be a good idea in a bowl game to have the WR that was filling in as a punter have to choose whether or not to run the fake or do the rugby punt (based on Frank's post-game claims when he threw Coale under the bus). Then Frank telegraphed the move with the timeout and with the repeated discussion, both in the huddle & on the sidelines.
Is that the 'option' you mean?
I'll agree with you that it was bad coaching (timeout to telegraph, even leaving it up to Coale was a bad move - I'd rather Beamer just call what he wanted him to do and/or design a better strategy for the fake), but I really disagree with the statement that Beamer threw him under the bus.
Beamer:
Coale:
http://www.roanoke.com/sports/columns_and_blogs/blogs/andy_bitter_virgin...
Thank you for posting this. I couldn't imagine CFB throwing anyone under a bus, much less a player. It's good to have the facts straight.
It was a simple read that a great player missed on. I don't see how that is a terrible coaching decision. Also not sure how 4 decades of watching football in any way changes that one play. It was probably the first year in that 40 you had seen a starting wr be the punter as well.
He's also still open.
The other takeaway here is that all yardage on punt plays this year has been positive. There have been NO NEGATIVE plays. The worst punt seems to be about 22 yards, but that's still better than the two returns for TDs we had last year.
It hasn't been that long since every time we had to punt my first question was, "I wonder if the punter will be able to handle the snap." I don't believe I've ever seen A J Hughes mishandle a snap that wasn't truly terrible.