Kickoff Strategy

[henry jones]

Prolly gonna see more teams add a 2nd kicker to put it in the first row of seats.  Bass definitely doesn't have the leg to pierce through the wind at Highmark Stadium.  I doubt yesterday was the last of his kicks to be taken to the house.

[The Frankish Reich]

6 minutes ago, henry jones said:

Prolly gonna see more teams add a 2nd kicker to put it in the first row of seats.  Bass definitely doesn't have the leg to pierce through the wind at Highmark Stadium.  I doubt yesterday was the last of his kicks to be taken to the house.

The old days of the combined punter/kickoff specialist?

[henry jones]

5 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

The old days of the combined punter/kickoff specialist?

Potentially and unfortunately!!

[Kirby Jackson]

On 9/6/2024 at 12:28 PM, Process said:

The NFL changed the kickoff rules to increase the number of returns. 9 out of 11 kickoffs yesterday were touchbacks....

 

Looks like this might be a bust but obviously this is a small sample size. 

 

How would you approach it? Kick deep every time? Mix it up?

 

Once we have more data it will be interesting to see what the average starting position is when the kick is returned. 

Kick it in the end zone every single time. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze of trying to defend the kickoffs. Until they make a touchback the 40, just kick it in the end zone. 

[Rochesterfan]

15 minutes ago, Ethan in Cleveland said:

I still think he was told to kick it short. Now maybe that's because he knew he couldn't kick it long enough. Not sure. It was windy but more cross wind than anything else. 

He should be able to hit a line drive deep enough to at least get to the endzone. 

 

Neither Kicker going that direction could reach the end zone the entire game.

 

Bass reached the 4 twice going that direction and Prater got 1 to the 2, but also had one short of the landing zone.

 

As every kick going the other way was through the end zone - pretty sure that is what they wanted, but both teams realized early that was not possible.

 

Therefore both teams were trying some different things that didn’t really work for either team.