Seriously what gives? What changed from previous years, and why? Field position ****ed us against MSU and again today due to whatever the hell you'd call the current PR philosophy.
What's the deal with punt return?
- Thread starter hawkandroll
- Start date
It has been bad this year. Dez was very talented the last few years as well. So it makes the drop off look even worse.
Plain and simple you need to catch the ball. Minus Dez last 10 years we’ve let way too many punts hit the ground. Need a guy with confidence to catch in traffic. Hurt us big time today. First time this ever really got me thinking was in 08’ loss at Pitt how we kept letting punts drop and killed us in field position especially final drive. Obviously wasn’t only thing that cost us but been an issue in multiple games today and nwesten this year.
I've never been in a coaching staff meeting, but I'm going to go out on a limb here. I don't think the new "philosophy" is to let the ball hit the ground and roll to the 5. Every punt returner knows that they need to catch the ball ... sometimes they're just not up to the task.
But they have 85 scholarship players. None of them can field a punt in traffic? I can understand this being an early season problem, but by now it should be fixed. I admit to being surprised Vandeberg screwed up so badly yesterday. He just isn't the same player that he used to be since the injury. It's too bad, too, because I thought he might have had a chance to make an NFL roster even if it was practice team. Not after this year, though.
I’m not sure why we don’t try to block every punt attempt. There’s no point in really ever trying to set up a return with the guys we use. Also not sure why we don’t put two guys back deep every punt, one shallow and one deep to at least make sure the ball is caught. If we aren’t going to try actually returning punts might as well catch as many as we can
I think Lou Holtz said it best when he asked his returners to cite the penalty for not catching a punt before it hit the ground. They responded that there was not a penalty for that.
He corrected them saying it was a loss of scholarship!
He corrected them saying it was a loss of scholarship!
I remember posters bitching about M.Hyde fair catching every punt that would be nice if that could be done this year
