Kickoff Coverage History

knoxjacket

knoxjacket

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In case you were wondering, I went back to 2000, oldest numbers I could find, and here you are:

1996: 14.61YPR
1997: 18.68YPR
1998: 18.96YPR
1999: 19.59YPR
2000: 16.43YPR - 7th in the nation
2001: 22.08YPR - 84th in the nation
2002: 18.88YPR - 33rd in the nation
2003: 22.89YPR - 96th in the nation
2004: 23.29YPR - 102nd in the nation
2005: 23.71YPR - 103rd in the nation
2006: 30.30YPR - 116th in the nation

What in the hell is going on?

Edit: RW.com has the stats back to 96.
 
Don't know what the hell is going on either. This is the only facet of our team that scares the living piss out of me. Although remember Clem'son's ko coverage is terrible as well.
 
Probably lack of depth is some of it, playing more freshmen, etc. But what I think the biggest issue is, is simply that we haven't had a kicker who could get the ball deep and high. Even when we got it to the goal line it was more of a line drive and the return team didn't have time to get down there. Could be wrong, but that's what it always looks like to me.
 
this is what has happened:

a) we had a deadbeat ST coach for a few years

and

b) as a result of the probation, our depth (and therefore our ST's) have taken a hit in terms of their athleticism. Our coaches are unwilling to play starters on coverage teams since we have few if any reliable backups to stand in for the starters should they get hurt.

P.S. - people knocking coach Kelly need to get real. I still haven't seen enough of our team to judge his coaching ability (after watching all of the games) and I doubt very much that many others have either.
 
2002: 18.88YPR - 33rd in the nation
2003: 22.89YPR - 96th in the nation
Click to expand...
Don't really remember our kicker from year to year, but this big jump could be due to an old kicker graduating.

Our year's numbers have also been inflated due to a 100 yard (yeah, the return sucked, I'm not arguing that). I still think overall, they're doing better this year.

We have a very good problem with kickoffs: we're doing them a lot more often this year because we're scoring a whole lot more. Most I've seen the past couple of games have either been a touchback or to around the 25. Don't remember any bad ones against VPI, and other than the 100 yard return, we had one returned to the 33, with rest being around the 20.
 
I still think overall, they're doing better this year.
Click to expand...

I think we're doing better in the 2nd half of the year thus far, except for the TD, which sortof ruined that trend.

We'll see. I'm glad the TD came in a win for us, so it'll give the players more motivation to fix the problem.
 
knoxjacket said:
1996: 14.61YPR
1997: 18.68YPR
1998: 18.96YPR
1999: 19.59YPR
2000: 16.43YPR - 7th in the nation
2001: 22.08YPR - 84th in the nation
2002: 18.88YPR - 33rd in the nation
2003: 22.89YPR - 96th in the nation
2004: 23.29YPR - 102nd in the nation
2005: 23.71YPR - 103rd in the nation
2006: 30.30YPR - 116th in the nation
Click to expand...

The downward progression over the years is certainly something to be concerned with, but geez, I didn't realize the numbers were that bad this year. There better be some improvement soon or somewhere down the line this will come back to hurt GT in a game it should win.
 
Anyone who gets a KO returned for a TD early in the year is going to have bad numbers.

What are UGA's numbers, out of curiousity? And what nationwide place would we get if we knocked 80 off our total?
 
What I appreciate more than anything is MJ came out and said it was his fault. Accountability goes far in my book. Maybe the other kids will wake up.
 
beej67 said:
Anyone who gets a KO returned for a TD early in the year is going to have bad numbers.

What are UGA's numbers, out of curiousity? And what nationwide place would we get if we knocked 80 off our total?
Click to expand...
Georgia is in 67th with a 20.54 average.

Turn that 100 yard return into a 20 yard return and we've given up 526 yards on 20 returns. That's a 26.3 average and good enough 112th place!
 
beej67 said:
What are UGA's numbers, out of curiousity? And what nationwide place would we get if we knocked 80 off our total?
Click to expand...

Beej: Here are the current kickoff coverage stats.

http://web1.ncaa.org/d1mfb/natlRank.jsp?year=2006&div=4&rpt=IA_teamkoreturndef&site=org

GT's 30.3 average actually ranks #114. I see that Clemson's 24.5 average ranks at #108, so obviously the Tigers are having some KO coverage problems of their own. UGA ranks #67 at 20.5.

If you knocked 80 off of GT's total the average would be 27.8 and still rank #113, so whatever subtracting 80 off of the total is to represent really doesn't change much. There is over a 3 yard average gap between #112 and #113, and actually a big 5 yard average gap between #109 (which interestingly enough is none other than USC) and #112.
 
Here's what our future opponents are doing on kickoff returns:

Clemson - 26.5YPR - 6th in the Nation :wow:
Miami - 17.36YPR - 101st in the Nation.
NC State - 23.81YPR - 27th in the Nation
UNC - 20.43YPR - 59th in the Nation
Duke - 23.00YPR - 29th in the Nation
UGAy - 23.76YPR - 22nd in the Nation
 
Clemson has put a lot of points on the board this year so along with that they have had to kickoff a few more times than most teams. The stats show six games played, 29 kickoffs (almost 5 per game), 712 total yards with one returned for a TD for a 24.55 average
 
My two cents.

We are halfway. Halfway is not 'early' IMHO.
I missed the UVA game. The VT game we did very good on kickoffs. The other games like Troy and Stanford were very, very bad IIRC. Not good when the little guys are averaging returns to the 35-45 yard lines.

Also, the ST coach should very much get some time to correct things. Was he even here in the spring? How about overanalyzing this after he has some guys in his coverage system for a few years.

Mauiwowee is doing a good but not great job. Sometimes the kicks are low and the consistency could be better. But his last two kicks in the Maryland game were huge kicks when we needed them.
 
I wouldn't put too much thought into this. Anyone read the number one team on that list? NORTH CAROLINA!!!

But seriously, it does suck and needs to be corrected. We were all happy after seeing our special teams' play in the VPI game. Wonder what happened differently in those two games?
 
Clemson's Kickoff return men have been either CJ Spiller or Jacoby Ford. Ford fumbled and lost the job to Spiller but has gained it back.

Ford is the fastest player on the team with legit 4.4 track speed and had already run one KO back for a TD this year. Spiller is possibly Rook of Year candidate and has run a punt back.

There is reason to be nervous about this....
 
we might be better off trying to pop the ball up in the air to the short men and let them have the ball on the 30-35. Sad to say but this is a clear strategic weakness we have relative to Clemson's strengths.
 
With or without the 100 yarder our kick coverage is still bad. Yes, we've done well in some games but overall, we just aren't getting deep enough before the return gets started. To me that's either, not enough speed on the unit, guys are simply getting blocked or the kicks aren't deep/high enough. I still think a lot of it is too many kicks being line drives. They just allow too much time to get the return set up before we can get down on it.
 
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