After quarterback, running back, fullback, wide receiver, tight end, offensive tackle, guard, center, defensive line, outside linebacker, inside linebacker, cornerback, and safety, the final stop on our trip around the Tennessee Titans position by position as we head into the 2016 offseason is a look at special teams.
As I now mention every time I do this positional analysis, special teams consists of five separate and distinct elements, albeit with overlapping skills. These are: (1) place kicking on field goals and extra points; (2) kickoffs, including kickoff coverage; (3) punts, including punt coverage; (4) kickoff returns; and (5) punt returns. The kicker or punter is normally the kickoff guy, the same players tend to play on multiple units, the kick returner and the punt returner are sometimes but not always the same guy, and a single guy (special teams coach Nate Kaczor last year, now Bobby April) is in charge of the whole mess. That does not make it not a mess, though, just a lumping of “not offense or defense.”
The Titans were not very good on special teams in 2015. They ranked 28th in Rick Gosselin’s highly respected rankings. Of much greater interest to me, and not just because I write for them, they ranked 28th by Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric. As I wrote last offseason, the small sample size nature of “special teams play” makes it even harder for me to judge than offense and defense, and I rarely watch special teams play when I do my detailed review of games. I frankly don’t know the first thing about kicking or punting mechanics, so it makes sense to me to judge special teams play on purely an outcome-focused basis. That is what the FO numbers do, and makes the most sense for me. Concentrating on FO numbers also lets me go into more detail in how the Titans performed relative to the rest of the league in each specific area.
The most obvious conclusion is that if the Titans were bad on special teams, then their key special teams specialists must have been to blame. Ryan Succop attempted place kicks and kicked off. By the standards of NFL kickers in 2015, he performed at roughly an average level. I know, going 14-16 on field goals, including 13-13 inside 50 yards, seems really good, but the standard of NFL kicking in 2015 is really, really high. When you add in that he missed 2 of 31 extra point attempts, he ended up a respectable but not standout 12th by FO’s FG/XP rankings. A bit above average was also where he ranked on kickoffs (12th by team, 13th among regular kickoff men). Some below average coverage work meant the Titans came out 19th by FO numbers for net performance on kickoffs. Nothing special, but not an obvious problem area. Succop was re-signed last offseason and should be back for another season of average-plus performance.
A few years ago, I tried to reset my book on Brett Kern, declaring him Directional Punter after a fine season that combined some not very long punts with some very short returns. That was an extremely poor description of what happened when the Titans punted in 2015. Instead, his season best resembled my earlier description of him as a fine punter who was more inconsistent than you’d like. By FO numbers, the Titans were 26th in punting. Kern himself ranked second in adjusted punt distance, which accounts for field position (teams backed up kick the ball further) and weather (which generally results in Titans specialists being downgraded thanks to the generally fine weather of the AFC South). The Titans ranked 30th, though, in punt coverage. Some of that may be at least somewhat attributable to Kern.
A good example of that, and the need to use more complicated factors to accurately assign blame and credit, is the Jaguars’ long punt return that set up their game-winning score in the Thursday night affair in Jacksonville. Jim Nantz was quick to declare it “not his best punt of the night” in the call of the game. By the box score, it looks fine-not special, but 44 yards is not a bad distance. The next day, Mike Mularkey noted it was unsurprisingly a combination of things-the coverage busted their lane responsibility, and it was also not a good punt, with a hang time of only 3.7 seconds instead of the preferred 4.0. I’m not going to break down Kern’s other 87 punts, so for my purposes I’ll simply note that it’s possible a detailed, holistic analysis might attribute some of the responsibility for the Titans’ lousy coverage units to Kern, and that I doubt he was actually the second-best punter in the NFL last season even without adding in that Pat McAfee (who ranked third by FO numbers) also kicked off.
Like Succop and long-snapper Beau Brinkley, Kern was re-signed last offseason and should be back for another season of average-plus performance.
The Titans’ punt return unit was on the whole pretty blah. Dexter McCluster was the primary returner. We saw in Kansas City in 2013 how good he can be at the job, but he had another pretty blah season. By FO numbers, he was 16th among the punt returners with at least 10 returns. When he was out, Harry Douglas and Perrish Cox both tried their hand at the task (McCluster 24 returns, 217, 9.0; Douglas 11, 73, 6.6; Cox 3, 17, 5.7). Cox was blah, Douglas was worse and fumbled. My preliminary guess is that McCluster has a good shot to be on the roster in 2016 and should and will be the punt returner if he is.
Well, I suppose I have to talk about it eventually. Kick returning. The Titans were not a good kick return unit in 2015. The Titans were not a not very good kick return unit in 2015. The Titans were in fact a really bad kick return unit in 2015. They had the worst starting field position in the league after kickoffs, starting at the 19.7. NFL average was 21.9. Second-worst was the Chargers at the 20.4. That was really, really bad. The Titans tried a few different players back there-it wasn’t quite 2009, when 10 different players returned a kick (okay, Craig Stevens’ return did not come when he was the deep man), but they tried a few. By FO numbers, Antonio Andrews came out best. Of course, he only had one return, and I believe that came on a short kick when he was the upback from the deep man. McCluster returned 13 kicks and wasn’t very good. Tre McBride got his shot later in the season and was bad. Putting Bishop Sankey, who had no significant kick return experience outside of possibly in high school, back there was obviously a bad idea, and he wasn’t good even when you throw out that he mishandled two of his nine returns.
I’m not sure what the Titans will do at kick returner in 2015. If a player currently on the roster does it, then I’d like it if it was McBride; McCluster’s skills make him a better punt returner, and he’s never been a good kick returner. It could easily be a new addition.
Conclusion-Type Thoughts
The most important move the Titans have made at special teams this offseason is obviously importing Bobby April as the special teams coordinator. He has a long history of some good special teams in this league, though not necessarily in 2015 (his 2015 Jets unit combined a lousy punter with bad punt protection and the league’s worst coverage unit for an awesome 32nd-place ranking per FO numbers). Mularkey has mentioned new schemes as part of what April will bring. Again, I don’t evaluate special teams in sufficient detail to say what that might mean, or how much effect it might have. Special teams performance is pretty variable from year to year, though, and between better coaching and some changeover among the core special teams players, the Titans could easily return to the roughly average unit I expected in the preseason.
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