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No more Kick off Specialist? (update: Signed to extension)


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I'm kinda on the fence with this. Gay was an automatic touchback. Unless Buffalo has a guy on the roster who can do the same they are rolling the dice a bit.

 

But right now i"m giving Ryan he benefit of the doubt. Lets hope he's right

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I'm kinda on the fence with this. Gay was an automatic touchback. Unless Buffalo has a guy on the roster who can do the same they are rolling the dice a bit.

 

But right now i"m giving Ryan he benefit of the doubt. Lets hope he's right

Gay was okay. He had the 8th most touchbacks in the league. For a specialist, I was kinda expecting more.

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With our red zone scoring issues, Mike Williams obviously.

you could have played Williams and sat Hogan and still kept Gay active.

There is no data supporting the roster spot of a kickoff specialist. None.

Is there any data at all on the pros and cons of a KO specialist? I wasn't aware of any studies.

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What occurred to me is that just cuz he wasn't tendered, doesn't mean that they don't intend/hope to keep him. I'm assuming that the Tender Offer is higher than the League Minimum. Since he (presumably) wouldn't draw much interest, perhaps they're hoping to sign him later & save a couple hundred K or whatever.

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Gay was okay. He had the 8th most touchbacks in the league. For a specialist, I was kinda expecting more.

 

You can't assess his kicking based on touchbacks alone. His best game for us was the Jets game we played in Detroit. He could have kicked every ball out of the back of the endzone, but he didn't. He boomed high, arcing kicks with air time to completely neutralize Harvin. I don't think Harvin ever got past the 20 in that game, and I'm pretty sure he got stuffed inside the 10 a few times because of those kicks.

 

I'm not lobbying for a kickoff specialist, just pointing out a situation where you would think stats could tell the story, but they really don't.

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Gay was okay. He had the 8th most touchbacks in the league. For a specialist, I was kinda expecting more.

 

Yep, he was at 57.5 % which was a good improvement over the team's 2013 percentage of 40.3%. The lone NFL kickoff specialist should be leading the league or close to it. Carolina's kicker was over 75%.

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What about having one guy kick and punt?

 

Has that ever been done, and if so, why not?

 

One guy takes every offensive snap all season, so why can't one guy kick a ball 5-10 times a game?

 

Maybe EJ can punt. Danny White!

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Hmmmm... All last season I would rip him every time he didn't kick a Touchback. It seems that his 59.0% on TBs (49 of 83) was good for 6th in the NFL: http://www.nfl.com/stats/categorystats?seasonType=REG&d-447263-n=1&d-447263-o=2&d-447263-p=1&statisticPositionCategory=KICKOFF_KICKER&d-447263-s=KICKOFF_TOUCHBACKS_PERCENTAGE&tabSeq=1&season=2014&experience=&Submit=Go&archive=false&conference=null&qualified=false

 

Maybe it is more critical than we (me) thought.

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What about having one guy kick and punt?

 

Has that ever been done, and if so, why not?

 

One guy takes every offensive snap all season, so why can't one guy kick a ball 5-10 times a game?

Don't forget about practice. Chris Kluwe (former Vikings punter) says that with 1 guy doing all the kicking/punting, the practice workload would wear out his leg during the season.

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