Patriots Slaughtering Washington at Half

In the pre-season game that is known as THE dress rehearsal for the approaching regular season, the Patriots starters are completely overwhelming the Washington Redskins, an 05 NFC semi-finalist, by a halftime score of 20-0.

Tom Brady has been the star, leading four scoring drives that heavily emphasized the pass, often from a no-huddle spread offense that the Redskins couldn’t stop. Ben Watson has been scary good (the only way you can describe it), both sitting down in zones for short gains, and blistering up the seam for 35 yards. His end zone cookie from Brady (who had eluded a massive Skins blitz) was almost too easy. Troy Brown has also been a key receiver, and it was his diving catch that set up the first Pats TD of the night, a 5 yard run by Laurence Maroney.

The Patriots have only run the ball 12 times, and have gotten nowhere. Corey Dillon set up the Pats first TD with a nice 39 yard screen play. The Pats clearly came in tonight wanting to throw the ball around the lot.

The defense has more than held its own with the offense, as they’ve hectored Mark Brunell from pillar to post. Rosevelt Colvin is a madman - he’s in the backfield on every play. I also liked seeing Tully Banta-Cain hold the edge to make the tackle on a Washington sweep, only a few plays after being run completely out of a similar play.

Both units have absolutely kicked the asses of Joe Gibbs’s team. One, I feel I have to mention again, that was a playoff team last year.

Steven Gostkowski, in his first game after winning the job this week, has hit two easy field goals.

The starters will begin the third quarter before giving way to the reserves. Talk to you later.

Pats Make Unexpected Offer to Branch

King of all Pats bloggers Mike Reiss, who was probably hoping for a slow Friday, brings us the news that the Patriots have today isssued a statement indicating that they have granted permission for holdout receiver Deion Branch to explore trades and new contracts with other clubs over the next week.

So the Pats are allowing Branch and agent Jason Chayut a small window to go out and get the free-agent-like deal they reportedly covet, an effort that will undoubtedly be complicated by the need for these clubs to adequately compensate the Patriots, along with Branch. The early, feel-good theory from here is that this may be the first step in resolving the month-long dispute between the club and its star wideout. Or it could be the first step out the door for a player who had been expected to be a central figure in the team’s push for a return to the Super Bowl in 06.

Weekly Roundtable - Pre-Season Week Three

Well, this is my first time hosting the round-table. I’m the slacker of the trio. Sort of like Manny. Speaking of which, they’re ruiiiiiiiiining my summaaaaaa…..Oops, sorry, wrong sport. For a moment I thought I was Larry Johnson and my role here was to ask irrelevent questions about off-topic subjects mixed in with inane and pointless commentary.

But I digress. On to the topic at hand, the Patriots. Very impressive performance last week. Lets take a look around the table and see what our esteemed experts (especially that Greg guy) thinks about some of the issues of the week:

ISSUE ONE: There has been a lot of commentary on Junior Seau both before his signing and after. Some of the commentators in this town trashed him as overrated, only to lighten their commentary after he was signed. First, has Seau been overrated in his career and second, how can he help the Patriots this year?

Greg: While Seau may have been slightly overrated, he was most certainly a very good player for his whole career. Idiots like Pete Sheppard ranting as if the guy was a stiff is insulting to anyone’s intelligence. Like Sheppard has broken down game films or something. Alls you need to know is many top coaches and GMs made him a centerpiece of their defense and paid him top dollars. Players who actually stepped on the same field as him and won games with him, like Rodney Harrison, and in the same era, praise him for his play and work ethic. And now Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli have endorsed him as well. I’ll take all these collective opinions over those of a bunch of IQ-challenged clowns screeching on the radio any day.

Bruce: I’m beginning to think that Rodney Harrison and Seau are more alike than we ever imagined. Of course, its probably safe to say that Junior has less left in his tank than Harrison did when he first got here, but both players had reputations around the league, but when Harrison got here, his reputation went out the window once the fans got to see him up close and what he brought to the team. With Seau, Belichick, Pioli and company obviously saw something that they liked, enough so to call the guy the day after he had announced his retirement. Like you Greg, I’ll trust their opinion over a glorified intern like Pete Sheppard any day. I see Seau giving the Patriots another leader on defense, and someone who they won’t rely on too heavily, but will be able to make a play when called on.

Scott: Overrated? Junior Seau? Come on. Who said that? Probably some idiot. Anyway, yeah, I think Junior Seau probably has been overrated over the course of his career. One thing Junior is, is photogenic. And he’s demonstrative. And he’s articulate. And he’s been a good player. You know what TV, radio and the papers do with those guys. They could make you sick of anybody. Besides, my general sense of Seau has always been as a guy who chased the ball all over the field (very well, admittedly) and wasn’t necessarily a guy that played within a team defense, like, say, a Mike Vrabel or Tedy Bruschi might. Seau also struck me as a guy who wanted the camera to be on him, frankly, which always rubs me the wrong way. Look, I don’t know how true any of this is, but what I do know is that it doesn’t matter at the moment. Because Seau can help the Patriots win games this year. I love that they have smart, character role players like Don Davis and Barry Gardner, but I don’t really want either of those guys on my opening day starting defense. Better they should be getting ready to cover a kick. It says here that Seau, even at 38 years old and coming off two injury-riddled seasons, leaves them better off than they were before. And it sure didn’t cost them much (relatively) to get there. Who’s going to take issue with that?

ISSUE TWO: Bam Childress had a nice performance Saturday versus the Cardinals. What do you think of his potential to be a solid NFL player based on what you’ve seen of him?

Greg: Childress just LOOKS small when he plays. But for two camps and one regular season game last year, he has made plays, played tough and smart and improves all the time. He reminds me of an even smaller Troy Brown. I think he can play and I think he makes the team and maybe even plays some.

Bruce: Belichick seems to be high on the kid, praising his competiveness and work ethic. If the Patriots don’t pick up another receiver somewhere, either via trade or the waiver wire, he very well could be on this team come opening day. I believe he did some work at defensive back last year as well, which had to endear him further in the eyes of the coaching staff. I’d like to see him stick around. Great name, too.

Scott: Show me something this guy has done on the field that makes you think he can’t stick in the NFL. How does Childress NOT make this team, given the shotages at wide receiver? Yeah, he’s small, but Childress is obviously a competitive player on this level. He won me over with the two-way performance against Miami last year. Seems to me there’s another little guy who’s still playing 13 years after getting a similar chance. Is Childress going to make THE difference at wide-receiver this year? No, he won’t. Can he make A difference? Maybe. Its not like there’s a long line ahead of him.

ISSUE THREE: With the Patriots final home exhibition game coming up this Saturday, what are your thoughts on whether the Patriots have committed consumer fraud, as some have claimed, by not playing their starters very long in some past home exhibition games (a trend that will likely end this year as its not the final exhibition game with one road game left)?

Greg: This was always a ridiculous notion which will likely not be as big an issue this year with the final game, where the starters sit almost the whole game if not the whole game, is on the road this year. What I want, as a fan, is wins during the regular season. If Bill Belichick can accomplish that better by sitting guys in pre-season, by all means he should do that. I can enjoy any football game no matter who plays and never had any problem looking for a diamond in the rough among lesser known players during exhibition season.

Bruce: Kevin Mannix and Dan Shaughnessy can rest easy this summer. I see some points that the critics make about the preseason games, namely that season ticket holders are forced to purchase the preseason games as part of their package. However, with the popularity of the team, I think it’s not all that difficult to find someone who is only too happy to go to the game, se the stadium and get glimpse of their favorite Patriots. The “consumer fraud” thing was a joke. Some of Shaughnessy’s columns come closer to consumer fraud than do preseason NFL games.

Scott: I’ve been watching pre-season football for almost 40 years. It’s never been any different. Now it’s ‘consumer fraud’? Stay the hell home, cupcake. That’s just another sportswriter bitching about having to work.

ISSUE FOUR: We asked this question early on, but has anything changed in terms of sleepers you see developing among lesser known or unknown players?

Greg: I’d go with Tully Banta-Cain. He isn’t unknown, he’s been on the team for three years and made an impact at times. But he is clearly taking on a bigger role this year and the early returns, in my eyes, is he’ll be an excellent play-maker at the outside linebacker position.

Bruce: James Sanders seems to be a name flying under the radar. He didn’t do too much in filling in when Rodney Harrison went down last season, but looks to be in a better position to compete this season. He’s consistently been working with the first team on the days that Harrison isn’t able to practice, and with he, Artrell Hawkins, Guss Scott and Tebucky Jones on the roster, it seems the team is much deeper at the safety position than they were a season ago. I don’t if all those players will be on the roster when the season begins, but I think it is a safe bet that Sanders is, and he might be called upon to contribute should Harrison be delayed in getting into game action.

Scott: He’s not unknown by any means, but I can’t let this question go without mentioning Asante Samuel. It seems he’s re-asserting himself when both he, and the team, really need it. I wasn’t necessarily expecting Ryan O Callaghan to go from being a fifth round pick to being (potentially) the starting right tackle. I’m sure some people will find a reason why this is bad, but to me, that’s a pretty big story right there.

ISSUE FIVE: In a shocking development, Bruce appears to have accurately predicted Eugene Wilson’s reappearance as a safety. Thoughts on this development?

Greg: Good call Bruce. I really thought Wilson would stay at corner. They still may move him back at some point and he certainly has the skills to play there. But if they keep him at safety, he’s been a borderline Pro Bowler there in the past, I expect him to return to that level this year.

Bruce: Well, I could still be wrong, after spending the first half of the preseason working at corner, now maybe they’re putting him back at safety to get him back up to speed there. I actually think a lot of where Wilson ends up depends on Harrison. When Rodney is on the field, Wilson seems like a different player back there. I wouldn’t be totally shocked to see Wilson playing corner if Harrison isn’t on the field, and seeing a safety combination of Hawkins and Sanders. Who knows what this coaching staff has in mind. It’s all about being flexible and having the ability to change things up, moving players in and out and playing to their individual strengths within the team defense.

Scott: I’m not convinced that Bruce doesn’t have some access that Greg and I don’t have. I’m sure that in exchange for his rosy coverage of the team, he’s getting some sweet insider stuff that Doyle and I can only dream of. He’s probably got Belichick’s home number, both here AND on the Cape, the same ones Alan Greenberg covets. That’s the only plausible explanation for this entire episode. Allen can run, but he can’t hide, though. We’ll be debuting our ‘Picks of the Week’ on Opening Day Weekend, and we’ll see how much his good time buddies will help him then.

ISSUE SIX: It seemed to me new defensive coordinator Dean Pees was a bit more agressive last week in both his attacking play-calling on defense and in mixing things up more often than last year under Eric Mangini. Was this just a one-time thing trying out different stuff or do you expect a different style under Pees this year? :

Bruce: It’s hard to tell if Mangini was limited by his personnel for much of last season or whether he was actually a little tentative in calling the defense. Early returns seem to be that Pees is going to have a more aggressive approach right out of the gate. I’m looking forward to see how he runs this defense and uses the parts he has. Again Belichick has had high praise for Pees, calling him one of the best coaches he’s ever worked with. Think about that statement, and some of the names that the head coach has worked with in his 30 years in the NFL.

Greg: I saw a more aggressive, but also more disciplined and coordinated defense. Mangini seemed to me to always be over his head last year. He did little to adjust. He did later in the season, but only after the players came to him. And you still had occasional uncharacteristic breakdowns even then. Not as many, but some. In his defense, he dealt with a lot of injuries. But his playcalling on defense was a disappointment. Something about Pees strikes me as the type of older, more experienced and innovative coach who can get the defense up to the 2003-2004 form. The early returns are good, he showed more looks and agressive, yet smart, play-calling in an exhibition game last week than we saw in almost any regular season game last year.

Scott: I’m a fan, so don’t expect anything profound. But last year, it was like the Douglas household was left under Robbie’s command for the weekend. Dad Steve was away on business and Uncle Charlie was at some class reunion in Cleveland. Robbie’s a good man, his heart is in the right place, he’s got a bright future, but he’s young, and tentative, and next thing you know, Chip and Ernie and Tramp are giving up 60 yard touchdown passes when they’re not getting trampled for 9 yards a carry. For me with Pees so far, its like Steve Douglas just pulled in the driveway.

ISSUE SEVEN: So, who was the biggest mediot this week?

Bruce: Gotta go with my man Ron Borges, and not really for any controversial statements he made this week about the Patriots. In his Sunday column, he mentioned and quoted extensively from a column last week on this very site by Bill Barnwell on Deion Branch. It was great that Borges used the information and even praised it. The problem was that he said it came from a different source than it actually did. When asked about it, Borges said he doesn’t read the Boston Sports Media website. (Probably with good reason…we’re tough on him.) Ok. If he didn’t read the column here…where did he read it? It didn’t appear anywhere else. Second place…Ed Berliner trying to get attention for himself by telling us the Patriots Dynasty is over and there is blood in the water. Hector Longo had a doozy of a column this week too, his annual “Things are really negative around the Patriots this camp.” column.

Greg: Always a tough call. But I’ll go with all those on The Big Show for trashing Junior Seau, none of whom who had the career he has had, claiming he could never play for Bill Belichick and then seeing him signed by the Patriots only days later.

Scott: This week we learned that old friend Tom E. Curran of the Providence Journal is leaving the daily Pats beat to take a job with the new NBCSports.com.Good for Tom, an occasional visitor to the grim, toxic wasteland known as the BSMW message board (but only to whore his chats; it seems evident now they were the foundation of his burgeoning media empire). Look, I’m biased where Curran is concerned. Sue me for liking a guy whose take on the Pats most closely resembled mine, and a lot of other Patriots fans I know. We just appreciated a guy that seemed to realize they were winning the Super Bowl every year. Your work is done here, TECurran. Bon Voyage.

The Case For - And Against - Adam Vinatieri, Part II

By Bill Barnwell, Football Outsiders - special to BSMW Patriots Game Day

Where I last left off, I was taking a look at the swings in ability that kickers show and wondering aloud whether Adam Vinatieri’s $2.5 million a year contract was worth it. If the Colts make it to the Super Bowl, and Peyton Manning doesn’t re-acquaint his offensive line with the undercarriage of a bus, they may end up being guided to victory by a game-winning field goal off the foot of one Adam Vinatieri. Again, using the Adam Vinatieri Refrigerator Poetry Kit, you can form the basis of many a news article months in advance: “icewater”, “Hall of Fame”, “Disneyland”, “clutch godliness”, and strangely enough, “Jeff George” and a race card are in the bag, too. I think the factory accidentally mixed the Vinatieri kit with the Jason Whitlock Refrigerator Poetry Kit. Anyway, if Vinatieri makes that kick, everything in the following column is moot. Flags fly forever. What I’m going to be taking a look at here, though, is whether spending a healthy amount of money on a kicker results in getting a good season out of your kicker, as well as out of your team.

To try and determine this, I created a database with the statistics of every kicker from 2000 on (the time period in which the USA Today Salary Database has salaries available; if anyone knows of an accurate repository for salary data before that, I’d love to expand the study). I limited the study to the seasons of kickers who had attempted twenty field goals or more, since the attempt is to analyze whether signing a kicker is a good idea, and if a kicker takes fewer field goals than that, he clearly wasn’t the choice made during the offseason, or he failed miserably. This left 170 different kicker seasons over the last six years, for an average of 28.33 kickers per season. For those kickers, I gathered the following statistics:

I then compared the first four statistics to the player’s salary by determining (well, by Excel determining) the correlation coefficient of the two groups. For those of you forgetting high school math, the correlation coefficient expresses the strength of a relationship between two variables. A value of 1.0 represents a perfectly positive relationship, in that an increase in one variable will always result in an increase in the other; for example, there is a perfectly positive relationship between each beer you drink and the body’s desire for Chinese takeout. Alternately, a value of -1.0 represents exactly the opposite; a perfectly negative relationship. This would be the relationship between each beer you drink and your ability to, say, toe the sideline. A value of 0.0, exactly in the middle, indicates that there’s no relationship between the variables whatsoever, and that the first item has absolutely nothing to do with the second.

The following table shows the correlation between salary and the other variables listed above.

kicker_salary.jpg

What the data bears out is that there’s a very tiny relationship between kicker salary and performance, if any at all. Furthermore, if you remove kickers who are making the rookie minimum or less, the relationship is weakened even further. Note the column on the right - teams actually get slightly worse (although the relationship is so tiny as to be nonexistent) as their kicker’s salary increases.

Why is that the case when all the other categories show a positive, if slight, relationship? While this isn’t anything proven, it’s a simple fact of the salary cap that money spent on the kicking game has to come from somewhere. Whether that be depth at a position, trading a draft pick away to save the money, or letting a starter go and a backup take his place, the funds have to be made available. These teams with higher-paid kickers may feel the effects in other areas as a result.

Now, let’s look at the average performance of these kickers and their teams. We’ll add two groups here: kickers whose salary exceeds Vinatieri’s average over the first three years of his contract, and those who are closest to it; I’ll form the latter group by selecting the five kickers whose salary is closest to $2,500,000 while above that number, and joining them with the five whose salary is closest to the figure while below it.

kickers.jpg

What we have there is, to me, real fascinating. While I wish the sample were bigger, the ten kickers with salaries greater than Adam Vinatieri this year and the ten kickers closest to his salary were a part of teams that performed worse than the average team. This doesn’t say that signing a big-ticket kicker is a bad idea; as you will note, the kickers with higher salaries did outperform the average kicker. However, there doesn’t appear to be any sort of positive benefit to a team by signing a better kicker. The correlation between team wins and both FG/XP and FG% isn’t particularly strong, at .159 and .213; the points correlation to team wins, on the other hand, is .596, which innately makes sense: teams that score lots of points tend to win games.

Another way to look at the possibility that Vinatieri’s addition would improve the Colts was to look at the concept of changing kickers itself. From the compiled kicker database, I made a list of all the times teams had switched from one kicker with 20+ attempts to another. That happened, by my count, 24 times from 2000-2005. The teams getting new kickers did see a boost:

old_vs_new.jpg

So, then, teams replacing their kicker generally see an increase of about a half-win in performance. If you look at the average salary column, though, you see that the new kicker generally makes less than the old one, and that’s not we’re looking to analyze; we’re trying to see whether signing an expensive kicker is a good idea, not a cheap one. Nine teams paid more for their new kicker than they had for their previous one, with the average performances below:

cheaper.jpg

Look at that! Teams who do bring in a more expensive kicker than the previous model increase their performance by nearly a game and a half. Granted, the sample is small, and nearly half that increase is due to the Chargers’ eight win increase the year they replaced Steve Christie with Nate Kaeding, but it’s at least some anecdotal evidence towards making a more expensive kicker a worthwhile investment. The Colts spent $1,800,000 on Vanderjagt in total salary last season.

So, then, was signing Adam Vinatieri a good idea for the Colts? And, alternately, was letting him go a bad idea for the Patriots? The statistical evidence points to several findings:

With those three things in mind, I can’t see Adam Vinatieri being such an improvement on Mike Vanderjagt that the increased spending the Colts are making on the kicker position is worthwhile. Until Stephen Gostkowski actually gets on the field in an NFL game and/or has to kick a game-winning field goal, it’ll be hard to gage whether the Patriots were right. What appears to be true, though, is that the Colts were wrong.

A Review Of The Tape: Arizona at New England

The most significant thing that appeared when reviewing last week’s exhibition game between the Arizona Cardinals and the Patriots was how agressive new defensive coordinator Dean Pees was. Considering this was an exhibition game, one wonders how agressive with the blitz and mixing up defenses he’ll be when the regular season begins. But the thing that stuck out in watching the tape of this game, Pees is much different in style than former coordinator Eric Mangini. Pees, it appears based on the early returns, will come after offenses more than Mangini was willing to and mix things up more often as well. If the Patriots can take this approach on defense this year, while also avoiding the big plays that plagued them last year, even with Mangini’s conservative scheme, they could be very tough for opposing offenses to deal with and create some big plays more often.

Lets take a look at the individual units:

QUARTERBACK: A very proficient showing by starter Tom Brady. The Brady we have all grown to know was on display….spreading it around, moving well in the pocket, good decisions, good accuracy. He looks like he is in fine form. Matt Cassel came in next and was better than last week. He still occasionally held the ball too long before deciding to throw it and other times took off running way too quickly, but he was improved and ran the offense efficiently for the most part. Too many of his plays are coming on broken, exhibition type situations where pure athletic ability is allowing him to get things done, however. He needs to show he can consistently sit in the pocket, move just enough to buy time and let the play develop as it was drawn up. There is clearly improvement and athletic ability there to work with. Its just still an on-going project.

RUNNING BACK: Another impressive performance from Laurence Maroney. Corey Dillon ran hard again, without much room. He did have a touchdown, however. Garrett Mills slipped a little bit at fullback from his debut. He struggled pass blocking at times, including getting called for holding to negate one completion. He did show some potential as a blocker though, throwing one great block to help Dillon score his touchdown. Patrick Cobbs showed some decent hands, which is surprising for a guy from a running school like North Texas. However, he was inconsistent and mishandled a screen pass almost causing an interception. He also had a fumble in the red zone and hurt his chances at a practice squad spot overall for the night.

WIDE RECEIVER: Another fairly quiet night, but Bam Childress had a nice game. He showed an ability to sit down in zones and got some nice separation from coverage on several ocassions. He had a nice night. The rest of the crew was average, nothing spectacular.

TIGHT ENDS: A good night for Ben Watson. He is turning into a great tightend. Dan Graham also was close to one hundred percent and was his usual outstanding blocking self. David Thomas needs to work on his blocking a bit, however, and got manhandled several times. When he got himself into good position, he did a nice job blocking, however. He also showed the ability to sit down in zones and get open.

OFFENSIVE LINE: An outstanding debut as a starter for Ryan O’Callaghan. He had a dominating night both run and pass blocking. Watching him closely, he displayed some of the best right tackle play the Patriots have had in the coach Bill Belichick era. All in his debut appearance on the first team. This bodes very well for his future. Others who had a good night include Russ Hochstein, who has really taken well to the center position since Dan Koppen got hurt and another youngster in Wesley Britt. Britt played with the second team and also held up well at right tackle on both running and passing plays.

DEFENSIVE LINE: Jarvis Green struggled against the Cardinals massive tackle Leonard Davis and got pushed around at times. Davis had a decided size advantage on Green, however. Ty Warren seems to be playing his best football of his career, after a down season last year. If he continues to show what he is now, it would be a big boon for the defense. Nobody else stood out on the line, but everyone was solid and seems to be playing well.

LINEBACKER: Barry Gardner seems to be fitting in nicely. If Junior Seau, recently signed, can contribute and Tedy Bruschi comes back early in the regular season, this unit is shaping up with more depth than initially thought. Perhaps one addition is still needed, but they played much better this week. Tully Banta-Cain was among the best players on defense Saturday. He caused plenty of havoc in the Cardinals backfield while he was in there and looks to be taking to the starter role. Eric Alexander had another nice night on special teams and caused a fumble that was recovered by the Patriots on a kickoff.

DEFENSIVE BACKS: Eugene Wilson was back at safety and looked comfortable. Asante Samuel had a mostly good night, though he was slow in coverage on one pass in the flats early in the game which allowed a first down. He followed that up a few plays later with a nice interception, however. He had an overall good night. Hank Poteat had an off night and he’ll need to do better to make the team this year.

KICKERS: A good night for Stephen Gostkowski. His kickoffs were long and he had no problem with any of his kicks. Josh Miller seems in good form and ready to continue his outstanding 2005 season.

All in all, a good night. The Patriots will probably play the next game, Saturday versus the Washington Redskins, as close to a regular season game for three quarters. It’ll be interesting if Pees continues his agressive defensive playcalling, as that’ll be a signal of a much different Patriots defensive style this year from last once the season starts. Watch for that.

The Case For - And Against - Adam Vinatieri, Part I

By Bill Barnwell, Football Outsiders - special to BSMW Patriots Game Day

Here are two seemingly-contradictory but usually-true statements about pro football:

1) Special teams are the most consistently underrated facet of the game.
2) 99% of kickers are fungible and shouldn’t be paid top dollar.

Somewhere at the point where these two statements meet is Adam Vinatieri. You can put together your own Vinatieri’s-a-clutch-god biography using “tuck rule”, “Super Bowl”, “snow angel”, “Ford F-150″, and several other wonderful items I’m sure you can get in the Adam Vinatieri Refrigerator Poetry kit. Point is, everyone reading this knows Vinatieri’s history and what happened this offseason. The more important question, and the one I’m going to answer through discussing those two statements above, is simple. “Why?”

Some announcers will pay lip service to the idea that special teams are particularly underrated, sure, but let’s be serious. If you asked the average announcer to name some great special team gunners, he would probably get Steve Tasker and - maybe - Bill Bates (if you were asking Troy Aikman and Daryl Johnston - and there’s a chance that neither of them actually remembers their own name, let alone Bates’) out of his mouth before changing the topic. By simply looking at the last few Super Bowls, though, it’s simply a fact that special teams played a huge and arguably instrumental role in determining who won. Forget the two Vinatieri game-winning kicks for a second. Last year, Tom Rouen’s incompetence in the Super Bowl led to the first four-touchback punting game since 2001 (playoffs or regular season), and handed the Steelers the equivalent of forty or fifty yards of field position compared to what an average punter in the same situations would have done. Two years earlier, Vinatieri was set up for his game-winner when John Kasay’s stray kickoff gave the Patriots the ball on their own 40, only seconds after Kasay had tied the game with an extra point.

To make a mostly irrelevant aside, no one ever remembers Vinatieri missing a chip shot from 31 yards in the first quarter of this game. Of course, it doesn’t make his game-winning kick any less meaningful, but if he makes the easy one in the first quarter, he doesn’t need to win the game at the end. Maybe it was some sort of misguided Uggy Urbina tribute. I digress.

Special teams are measured at Football Outsiders using our DVOA statistic. For a detailed explanation of how we measure their performance, please see our newly-updated methods page. With regards to kickers, we measure how well they kick relative to an average kicker in the same situation. It’s no stretch to think that simple kick percentage or points aren’t really accurate measures of kicker performance; for example, a kicker who goes 27-34 in Buffalo is probably doing more difficult work and performing better than a kicker who goes 29-30 kicking in Minnesota’s dome. As a result, when it comes to field goals, we also adjust our statistics for location of the attempt - much like park effects in baseball, kickers are consistently better on turf than on natural grass, in a warm weather stadium than in a cold one, and in Denver (or Mexico City) than anywhere else. We also adjust our numbers for the forgotten (by most fans) aspect of a kicker’s job - kickoffs.

Kickoffs are forgotten about, mostly, because they’re not particularly focused upon. If you watch one on TV, you’re likely to hear Mike Patrick still rambling on about how Brett Favre’s rambunctiousness just earned the Packers a touchdown on the previous drive, often with a closeup of Favre drinking Gatorade or getting fitted for a suit on the sideline while the kick is in the air. Would that ever happen while a field goal was in the air? Of course not. In addition, the result of a kickoff that isn’t a touchback is often credited to the kick returner first and the coverage team second, without considering the hang time of the kick. Finally, kickoffs don’t show up in a kicker’s fantasy football stats, and without that to consider, the kicking game loses relevance to a good amount of fans - at least, until your team’s kicker misses two kicks in overtime. Hi New York. If I haven’t made it clear already, allow me to instill it further: field position is the hidden game within a game, and one that needs to consistently be won. Kickoffs can be a huge part of that. Just for reference, here’s how teams who kick off well do as opposed to teams who kick off poorly:

koperf.png

A couple of notes: First, since we only have play-by-play data stretching back to 1997 processed as of right now, we only have Kickoff DVOA statistics for those teams. Furthermore, I didn’t include the kickoff stats in this table - if I did, you would see how bad that 2000 Buffalo Bills team was at kicking off. Kickoffs cost the Bills -32.1 points worth of field position; the second worst team lost just -20.9 points worth of field position. The difference between that Bills team and the second worst team was greater than the second worst team in the era and, say, the twentieth. The average beginning line of scrimmage after a Buffalo kickoff that year was on the opposition’s 37 yard line. 37! Imagine how good that Bills team could’ve been if they’d started Doug Flutie at quarterback all year and let him kick, too.

Now, let’s make the same comparison for the ten best and worst teams at kicking field goals in the DVOA Era:

kickperf.png

Yep - you’re reading that right. Adam Vinatieri had two of the top ten performances on field goals and extra points of the last ten years in 2002 and 2004… and had one of the ten worst in 2003. (In 2005, Vinatieri was almost dead average, ranking 17th in the NFL.) Now, I don’t mean to imply that Vinatieri’s 2002 and 2004 are nullified by his poor 2003; you could form a reasonably convincing argument that 2003 was a fluke, supplemented by Vinatieri playing through a back injury. That being said, there’s certainly evidence pointing towards the idea that Vinatieri’s numbers would have decreased.

Take the ten kickers on the best FG/XP performance list on the left. Not counting Neil Rackers and Joe Nedney (who we obviously don’t have year-after data for), the eight best field goal kicking seasons in the last ten years have been followed with seasons where those kickers averaged…18th in the league. If you eliminate Vinatieri’s ‘03 because of his back injury, they average 16th. Gary Anderson went from having a flawless season to being next-to-last the year after. Mike Vanderjagt went from 1st in 2003 to 27th in 2004. Same kickers. Same teams, same situations. The best of the best simply just regressed to the mean. You simply just don’t see this sort of behavior at other positions anywhere near as frequently or consistently.

Later on this week, I’ll be analyzing the likelihood that the money the Colts spent on Vinatieri will be well-spent.

Leftovers

Quick quiz:

After two weeks of pre-season football, which NFL offense leads the league in yards per game? Which offense leads the league in yards per play? Third in plays from scrimmage? Third in time of possession? Third in 3rd down percentage? Fourth in first downs?

Hint: the answer to all six questions is the same team, one which reportedly is now battling a myriad of offensive problems.

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