If you look up the word “useless” in the dictionary, there’s a whole section dedicated to traditional punting stats. No, seriously. They’re \*\*\*\*ing useless. Out of all the things that the NFL tracks, the usual stat points for punts are one of the items most intricately linked to what _other_ people do.
Net yards seems fine, but the punter rarely has a ton of control on the return distance. A missed tackle on an otherwise great punt could turn a victory into a blemish. Yards per punt is too greatly impacted by the rest of the team. An offense that tends to stall early could make a punter look better by virtue of them having to blast deep shots more often than their counterparts. Coaching aggression is a factor too, with conservative coaches more likely to call punts in opponent territory which naturally leads to shorter punts.
So what’s the solution? Darned if I know. But I did create a measurement I call “bad punts” to try and isolate just the punter’s contribution to the play, and factor in field position to some degree. How does it work? I’m glad you asked…
It’s been a couple years since I last did this, so I’ll give a full rundown of the method to this madness. The methodology hinges on a few starting assumptions:
* All NFL punters are capable of punting the ball greater than the average distance (47.4 yards this season).
* Sometimes you would like to boot it that far (or farther).
* Sometimes you don’t want to boot it that far.
* The distance you’d like to boot it changes based on field position.
* The only thing the punter directly controls is how far they punt it.
Look, I know these seem like condescending things to point out but it’s necessary because traditional stats don’t seem to give a crap about many of these things, and present stats that are too dependent on other factors. So let’s get to how I deal with it.
My “bad punts” metrics only look at the distance of the punt. Returns aren’t a consideration. Different field positions call for different punt distances. If you’re backed up at your own one-yard line, you want a longer punt than one from midfield for example. So I break the field into zones.
I can expand if anyone wants, but my metrics consider all punts in opponent territory to be a “bad punt.” Once you hit the 50, you should be ashamed to punt. This is the easiest zone to explain.
From your own 25-49 yard line, all punts less than 40 yards are considered bad punts. Why 40? This is somewhat opinion based, but let’s look at the outcomes. On one end of the results spectrum is a team punting from their own 25 with a punt of exactly 40 yards. That would put the ball landing at the opponent 35-yard line. Is that a great punt? No. Is it even a good punt? Not really. It’s an acceptable punt.
My metric only calls out truly bad punts and separates them from “everything else.” What about the other end? You punt from the 49 and it’s a touchback? Again, I won’t lie and say that the net gain of 31 yards is great, but it’s more “meh” than bad. The 40-yard-punt rule here also sets you up as approaching an average punt. You don’t want a boomer here on the regular.
Finally, we have punts from the team’s own 1-24 yard-line aka “backed up.” If you’re that far back, you need a punt that’s greater than league average. You want to boot it from here. Anything less than an average punt is a bad one here. The stats are all in whole numbers and the average is 47.4, so this range is “bad” from 47 or yards less in the stat sheet.
Now that this is out of the way…
Buffalo Bills punter Mitch Wishnowsky has one very good metric with traditional stats, being the seventh-best punter in getting the ball downed within the opponent’s 20-yard line. That metric does have a lot of confounds with the rest of the special teams unit helping achieve it. Still though, this is a good thing.
When it comes to yards per punt though, Wishnowsky was 28th of 33 qualifying players this past season. As one of the most commonly used stats to measure their worth, this puts Wishnowsky in quite a pickle. Here’s a chart with my bad punt metrics for the man.
Because of the amount of manual data entry that goes into this measurement, I don’t run the numbers for all qualifying players, instead using 10 total to form a comparison group. These punters are in descending order of yards per punt. Daniel Whelan was the best in the league in that measure and Thomas Morstead was the worst. Bryce Baringer was the most average.
What are my takeaways from this exercise this year? Wishnowsky has a total bad-punt rate of 34%, which is striking distance of the average of 29%. It seems like he fares quite a bit better here than the traditional yards-per-punt stat.
We can also factor out the opponent territory bad punts, as those are strictly coaching-decision bad punts. If we do that, we find two interesting points I didn’t add into the table of data.
For Wishnowsky, 18% of his punts were from opponent territory. We can only work from my sample above for this, but it’s tied for the third-highest rate. That means there’s some suggestion that Sean McDermott was punting in opponent territory at an elevated rate.
If we factor out the coaching-decision bad punts, the average shifts to 18% of punts being bad ones. Wishnowsky lands at 19%, nearly perfectly on the average. He’s the fourth-highest rate so still not great, but it reinforces the average perception.
Okay Skare, all of your advanced measures say he’s an average punter. Wow! So cool! Well, here’s one more thing to maybe help make the case for the man being decent at his job. In the intermediate zone (between 24-49 yard line), Wishnowsky was quite good with a bad-punt rate of 8%. As noted, the one zone is coaching-decision bad punts, which leaves the third as the real red flag for Wishnowsky. This should be the easiest zone to correct. Just tell the guy to boot it.
See More:
* [Buffalo Bills Analysis](/buffalo-bills-analysis)
* [Buffalo Bills Opinion](/buffalo-bills-opinion)