We need to be a lot better on special teams

[US Egg]

There’s always room for improvement, but Martin had a good season last year.

[dave mcbride]

On 10/21/2024 at 10:11 AM, DabillsDaBillsDaBills said:

As you said, T Bass's struggles have been well documented. 

 

Sam Martin has been flying under the radar as a pretty bad punter. His 47.5 yard average punt is 18th in the league, but his 40.3 average net punt is 27th. His kicks tend to not go very far and are in the middle of the field with poor hang time. That's a bad combination. 

 

Coverage has been spotty as well, we were the first team to allow a kickoff return for a TD in this new format back in week 1.

 

Coaching is also suspect. Remember when we had a kickoff from the 50 yard line towards the end of the Jets game? Had we kicked the ball out of bounds the Jets would've started their drive at the 25. Instead we kicked for a touchback and Jets started at the 30. Either Bass meant to kick it out and butchered it (entirely possible), or our coaches don't know the rulebook. 

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/41908327/houston-texans-kickoff-loophole-green-bay-packers-kaimi-fairbairn-week-7

Re Martin, he's had to kick in two high wind games (AZ and TN) and had punts of 27 yards and 34 yards into the wind. No other punter has to regularly deal with the windiest stadium in the league. That should be factored in. In Houston - a controlled environment - he punted 8 times and averaged 50.1 yards per kick.

[bills_fan]

I know special teams are hard to quantify, but here are Rick Gosselin's rankings of the Bills under McDermott.

 

2017- 7

2018 - 31

2019 - 12

2020 - 8

2021 - 8

2022 - 5

2023- 28

 

https://rickgosselin.com/category/special-teams/

 

Gosselin's ranking seem to account for most of the basic categories. They are not perfect but they are as good a measure as any.  And achieving a consistent top 10 ranking really has to be a priority IMHO.

 

I believe we have had very few big splash plays on ST recently outside of the huge Hardy return against Miami last year.  The "glory days" Bills SB teams seemed to me to have a huge special teams play on a weekly basis.  Now that could be my rose colored glasses, but Tasker, Pike etc. seemed to always flip field position, cause a turnover or whatever to swing the flow of the game in our favor.  I'm not sure the best way to get there.  We do need some better ST players, I think.  And not just K, P, Returner. Our 2020-2022 ST seem to be a strong point based on the rankings above.  

Edited October 22 by bills_fan