![]() Baxter does this - starting cornerback Iman Marshall was on USC’s punt team at the time of our interview - and Baxter isn’t worried about elite recruits scoffing at special teams. Special teams might be thought of as the third unit on a team, but the best outfits put many of their best players on the unit. It’s not always just the fact that you blocked a punt, but you’re also factoring in all the shanked or poor hit punts that resulted in a flipped field position.” “Well, that’s equivalent to a guy who punted it 42 yards and we got a 10-yard return, everyone’s fired up. “A lot of people don’t understand - it’s not just that we’ve blocked a punt, we may have forced the punt that went 32 yards or less,” Biagi said. So how does a team make the decision to come after the specialists? To figure out the how and the why, I spoke to three special teams coordinators: North Texas’ Marty Biagi, whose schematic ingenuity produced this incredible punt return USC’s John Baxter, 2011 winner of Football Scoop’s special teams coordinator of the year award and Cincinnati’s Brian Mason, who learned under Urban Meyer, one of the most special teams-minded head coaches in football. And that’s before even negating the one or three points the offense might’ve been hoping for. It’s a titanic change in field position versus what’s expected. This is an added yardage bonus against an opponent already willing to cede possession. Blocks are guaranteed to happen behind the line of scrimmage, rather than somewhere downfield. There were 16,514 total PATs, field goals, or punts in college football in 2017, and 234, or 1.4%, were blocked.Īnd it can have a more devastating effect than any other play.Of the 31.1 times college football teams passed per game in 2017 - a total of 51,312 times - defenses had 1,456 interceptions, picking off 2.8% of them.Of football’s most impactful sudden change plays, the blocked kick is twice as rare as an interception, relative to the number of opportunities for each.
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