Bad TMQ Advice: Punt to the Sidelines

I've had a bit of blogger's block lately, and the lack of sleep (thanks to my 4 month old son) hasn't helped matters. I figured the best way to find something to blog about would be to read Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column. I used to read it religiously, but he pissed me off so frequently that I stopped reading.

Right on cue, his first item proposes a ridiculous theory basically saying "punters should practice kicking out of bounds to prevent returns for touchdowns." Like most of TMQ's oft-repeated strategies (don't blitz, go for it on 4th down more often, run on 4th and short, etc.) it sounds pretty good at first. If your punter could drop the ball right on the sideline, you wouldn't give up any return yards. Since punting that accurately obviously isn't possible, Easterbrook proposes that you would be willing to give up a few yards of distance to ensure that the ball went out of bounds. Alright, that still sounds pretty reasonable, but as you'll see shortly, it's a typical half-baked TMQ scheme supported by selective use of statistics. I'm not sure if he just doesn't think these things through all the way, or if he thinks it's funny to have legions of smug NFL fans blindly parroting his arguments to their friends.

The most obvious reason that punters kick to the middle of the field rather than to the sidelines is distance. The punter gets the ball in the center of the field (somewhere between the hash marks), so the best way to kick it as far down field as he can is just to boom it straight ahead. Just how much distance is lost by kicking to the sideline instead of straight ahead? You'll have to trust me on the geometry, but assuming a 40 yd. punt from the center of the field, you lose 10 yds. of down field distance by kicking to the sideline instead of straight ahead. Are you really willing to give up that much distance to prevent touchdowns? Easterbrook argues that the distance lost by kicking to the sideline is almost the same as the average punt return. The punt return statistics are skewed by the very long returns, and even so, the 3-4 yds per punt he admits are lost due to his strategy aren't as meaningless as he would have you believe.

The calculations above assume that your punter can drop the ball on a dime on the sideline. Since that's not going to happen, let's think about how your punter's inaccuracy will affect TMQ's strategy. If the punt goes farther than expected, you end up with more wasted distance, because the ball just travels farther out of bounds but still crosses the sideline at the same point. If the punt is short or angled too far towards the center of the field, you end up with a punt that didn't go as far down field as a straight ahead punt, and the receiving team still has an opportunity for a return. Worst of all, if the punt is angled too sharply towards the sideline, you end up with an even shorter punt than you intended. Easterbrook's argument here is that punters should practice this sort of kick more. Really? You don't think punters practice accurate kicking to down punts inside the 20? Look how well that works out. Most NFL punters can't control the distance their punts go with any kind of precision. So basically you're giving up around 10 yds a punt, but there's still a chance that the punt could end up in bounds with an opportunity for a touchdown return. Your punter could angle the kick more towards the sideline to guarantee that the ball goes out of bounds, but then you're sacrificing even more distance.

At this point, some people may still argue that dramatically shorter punts are worth it to prevent touchdown returns. TMQ offers some statistics to support this point, saying that there were 15 punts returned for touchdowns last year. Like all TMQ statistics, this only tells part of the story. There were also 53 fumbles on punt returns last year. Even assuming that only half of those were recovered by the kicking team, that still means that you are almost twice as likely to regain possession on a punt to the middle of the field as you are to give up a touchdown. Punting out of bounds takes away the possibility of a receiving team fumble.

NFL teams are often stupid, risk-averse, and change resistant. There are plenty of examples of scenarios where teams consistently use a boneheaded strategy (such as going for 2 when down by 8 early in the game), but TMQ overreaches trying to sound like a genius. The strategy of having a punter practice super-accurate kicks out of bounds is just one example. I'd say a better "strategy" on punts is for your special teams players to practice staying in their lanes and not getting blocked.

[J-Red's note: Congrats to Brien on beating me to Post 500. I was trolling the web trying to find a way to swipe it for myself]