[DanT]

Originally Posted by alnorth

He might have not had much of a chance (or has been allowed to try) to kick a directional punt yet. I'm not amazed that he can punt the ball 50+ yards, lots of guys do that. What Colquitt does is this:

Colquitt catches the ball, and boots the freakin thing up into the sub-Troposphere. The punt returner stares up, keeps craning his head, sighs, turns around, and casually walks backward about 40 yards. Pauses, considers for a moment, looks up again, sticks his finger in the air, and walks back another 10 yards. Taps his shoes, looks at his watch, and begins brewing a cup of coffee. The cover men stroll up and strike up a conversation about the controls for the new Madden game and how they arent being accurately portrayed on the PS2. One cover guy taps the returner on the shoulder, and points up. The returner gives an appreciative nod, waves a bored referee over, and says "hey ref, " *glances around at the entire kicking team standing around him in a circle, then back at the ref* "if that ball ever comes back down, I'm fair catching it, ok?" After two TV time outs, the ball comes down into his waiting arms, and the special teams leaves the field.

Classic!

If we can get a 20-yard improvement per game from our punting this year, that could work out to somewhere around an extra point per game, on average:

http://www.dynamist.com/articles-spe.../football.html

Originally Posted by Virginia Postrel's NY Times article from 12Sept2002

Using data from about 700 regular-season N.F.L. games, Professor Romer estimated the value in expected future points of getting a first down at each yard line on the field. To keep the analysis relatively simple, he looked just at the first quarter.

By these calculations, the value of a first-and-10 on a team's own 1-yard line, a terrible position 99 yards from a touchdown, is minus 1.6 points. Moving up the field, the value rapidly increases, hitting zero at the 15-yard line. From there on, each gain of 18 yards is worth about a point in the final score.

The bottom line: Teams tend to overestimate the value of field position, compared with keeping the ball, on their end of the field and underestimate it, compared with the value of a field goal, on the other team's end. When those estimates are corrected, the risks of going for it look a lot lower.