When will Special Teams look special?

November 8, 2018

by Alex Zeese

As we were wallowing in self-loathing on last weekend’s show Steve asked me to try and figure out what’s going on with the Redskins punt return unit, in particular why the Redskins have such a low average when it comes to returning yards. Most of you know that I’m a big fan of special teams, so I was happy to take a closer look. When watching our special teams I did two things: first, I looked at the raw numbers, and then I took a closer look at each punt return to see what went wrong and why.

When it comes to the numbers there are a few obvious problems. First, the Redskins lost Trey Quinn in week one. Quinn only had two returns attempted vs the Cardinals. On both returns he got 12 yards but one was called back on a penalty by Quinton Dunbar, so while Quinn’s official stat line says he’s had two returns for only six yards each, this is not quite true. Quinn was injured on that return and has since been replaced by backup Greg Stroman. Stroman has struggled, averaging just 5.6 yards per return.

Those stats don’t really tell the real story for the Redskins special teams unit. The most interesting stat is that the Redskins have only attempted seven returns on 30 punts. seven attempts put Washington at the 2nd least return attempts in the league ahead of Buffalo, which had the lowest with six. So, a large part of the problem for Washington is that the team simply has not had as many return opportunities. Of those 21 balls that were not returned three of those punts were touchbacks, another three went out of bound, and another three were downed by the opposing team. The remaining were fair catches. When I started watching the All-22 film of our punt return team a few issues were clear.

Stroman might be a bit overly conservative on his returns. Perhaps he’s being told to call for the fair catch more often than not. But there were at least two instances where I saw him call for a fair catch and he had a good 10-yard cushion around him.

The bigger problem I saw was that on most punts, our defenders are struggling to block for the returner. I saw multiple punts every game where gunners came off the line of scrimmage and no one gets a hand on them. Fabian Moreau and Danny Johnson are the guys who’ve primarily held these duties on defending punts. While Moreau is doing an okay job, Johnson, in particular, is ineffective. Much of the time, he’s not even getting a hand on his man and guys are flying right past him. On the inside, it also looks to me like the Redskins are focused more on trying to block the punt rather than blocking for the return. I think that because of this we are seeing Stroman being extra conservative with his attempts and as a result on the few returns that Stroman has attempted he’s typically being forced to go east-west or duck and dodge a gunner right as he gets the ball. There is no blocking set up for him downfield, even on his best return, which was a 10 yard run vs Carolina in which he was luckily able to break a tackle before he even took his first step.

Usually, when the team has issues returning punts and kicks, the fans will put 90% of the blame on the return man, and often that’s fair. But the Redskins issue this year isn’t a case of Jamison Crowder fumbling or having a guy who loves to run East-West rather than get up the field. From what I’ve seen, the culprit for the Skins’ issues on punt returns this year looks to mostly be a lack of blocking. Stroman doesn’t take any risks and prefers to call for a fair catch. However, I think when Quinn comes back the team will still struggle unless they can give their man some space to run. If the Skins really want to start flipping the field, they will need to try and block for him.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/S/StroGr00.htm
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2018/