Ooh. Fun with numbers. My specialty.
Let's do just that, subtract the longest return:
4-110 (27.5 avg) - 44 = 3-66 (22.0 avg)
But when you looked at the game-by-game stats from last year...
...did you do the same for them?
HOU: 1-16, 16.0 avg, long 16
TB: 3-105, 35.0 avg, long 43
ATL: 2-55, 27.5 avg, long 28
NO: 4-159, 39.8 avg, long 82
MIA: 2-80, 40.0 avg, long 53
NYJ: 3-104, 34.7 avg, long 43
OAK: 3-98, 32.7 avg, long 57
NE: 2-22, 11.0 avg, long 22
KC: 1-14, 14.0 avg, long 14
SD: 1-42, 42.0 avg, long 42
CAR: DNP
MIA: 3-79, 26.3 avg, long 37
NE: 5-126, 25.2 avg, long 33
DEN: 5-120, 24.0 avg, long 28
CIN: 5-220, 44.0 avg, long 99t
NYJ: 6-151, 25.2 avg, long 39
Subtract the 82 yards of heartbreak in the Alamodome, and he didn't even hit his career average vs. the Saints. Raiders game is even worse: take away the 57-yarder, and the other two only average 20.5 yards.
One game, on a chewed-up grass field, against a team that gave up an average of 21.9/return and didn't allow a runback longer than 46 yards in all of 2005, doesn't give me enough data to conclude... well, much of ANYTHING, really. Fishies' kickoff D isn't as good as the Pats'. Let's see what happens this week.