Preseason Statistical Analysis: Special Teams

This is part 2 of my Preseason Analysis series, focusing on the special teams. Statistical analysis of the Steelers offensive line can be found here. Statistics from the groundbreaking web site Football Outsiders are used for these posts. Future parts (to be released over the rest of the week will feature (in no particular order) quarterbacks/running backs, wide receivers/tight ends, and the defense.

The main story surrounding the special teams this preseason has been the controversy over Jeff Reed’s kickoffs. Quotes from Reed have criticized the kickoff coverage from last year. I’ll leave the question of whether Reed should have done that to someone more versed in psychology. What I’ll tackle here is whether Reed was right.

This page lists Football Outsiders’ special teams stats for last year. The relevant stats are reproduced below: DVOA, which is the total value of the special teams compared to an average unit, and points gained or lost due to the various components of special teams.

As you can see, the Cleveland Browns had by far the best special teams in the division (and best in the NFL by a wide margin), mainly due to the feet of Josh Cribbs. Baltimore was fairly good, and Cincinnati was generally bad, except for punt returns (Quan Cosby).

The Steelers, on the other hand, were dreadful. Jump it to see just how bad they were and to take a look at the Jeff Reed era of special teams as a whole.

When you get to the Steelers’ numbers, one number definitely stands out: those -34.7 points from kickoffs (by far the worst in the NFL; Detroit was second with -9.0). The obvious question is: how did that happen? There are two main components of success in kickoffs: the skill of the kicker and the skill of the kickoff coverage unit.  A quick and dirty way to assess that is to just list the points from kickoffs over the entire Jeff Reed era, since kickoff coverage units have a lot of turnover over time:

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Daniel Sepulveda wouldn’t be an upgrade over Reed in kickoffs, it just means that the historically bad kickoffs last year weren’t entirely Reed’s fault.

So Reed has never been great at kickoffs, but the historically bad 2009 is a clear outlier, indicating that last year’s kickoff problems were indeed mainly the fault of the coverage unit.

Last year’s return man Stefan Logan was among the cuts over the weekend. From the first chart, you can see that kick and punt returns were about average, so if the Steelers think they have an upgrade, be it Antonio Brown or someone else, it was a good move.