I keep seeing the narrative that our special teams is bad. Can someone explain the reasoning for thinking this. because I don't think they've been bad, I think they have been limited by circumstances.
1. Punts have been pretty good
2. Kickoffs have been pretty good
3. Punt returns have been mainly fair catches but that is mainly dictated by the punt. Sure we'd like to get more and better returns but I'd rather have the returner make the smart play.
4. Kickoff returns are similar to punts in that they are dictated by the kickoffs and with the current rules there is more touch backs and fair catches.
4. FG's while we have had some misses I feel we are still pretty decent.
Punting has been okay given it's a backup, but I still wish he'd kick more straight-up and less running punts.
Kickoffs have been fine but that doesn't ask much. When teams do bring them out, we tend to give up yardage/not stop them much before the 25. Kick coverage can be spotty some games.
Punt returns get a bad rep from the Iowa game, as well as occasional muffs at other times. Just catch the ball, we rarely return these nor have a need for them. However, I'd almost be willing to let some of the punts we fair catch around the 10 to take bounces.
Kickoff returns are poor when we choose to take them out, we rarely get them to/past the 25 we could be taking them at via fair catch. We've trapped ourselves inside our own 20 at times doing this, even when we have an automatic way of avoiding that.
FGs kill us long, which doesn't bode well for winning games when we largely love to stall out around the opponent 40 yard line. However, dating back to last season, we've had an unacceptable amount of blocked FGs caused primarily by blocking failures.
