Special teams finalists

JohnTurney
Posts: 2220
Joined: Fri Oct 31, 2014 1:28 pm

Special teams finalists

Post by JohnTurney »

Kickers
Morten Anderson
Lou Groza
Adam Vinatieri
Jan Stenerud

Punters
Ray Guy
Yale Lary
Shane Lechler
Jerrell Wilson

Returners
Mel Gray
Devin Hester
Billy "White Shoes" Johnson
Brian Mitchell
JohnTurney
Posts: 2220
Joined: Fri Oct 31, 2014 1:28 pm

Re: Special teams finalists

Post by JohnTurney »

Sad list. Some okay, some really off-base

They could have used Rupert Patrick's data
for the kickers. He can speak for himslef
in terms of comparing to average I think
Rupert will say Vinatieri wasn't much above
average and that Nick Lowery was better
and others...

of these 4, the two that were better than
their peers are Stenerud and Groza.

Wilson---way too many punts blocked.
Lary, gave up a lot of return yards.

No one on that committee knows that in terms
of net, not getting punts blocked Bobby Joe Green
is far better than Wilson.
JameisLoseston
Posts: 391
Joined: Wed Oct 16, 2019 12:39 am

Re: Special teams finalists

Post by JameisLoseston »

Let's be real, Vinatieri was making it whether you like it or not. Interesting omission of Sammy Baugh as a punter though, I guess it means he's a lock to make the team as a QB. And since Lary made it as a punter, Christiansen missing as a returner surprises me.
Reaser
Posts: 1553
Joined: Sat Oct 11, 2014 11:58 am
Location: WA

Re: Special teams finalists

Post by Reaser »

He should be since he was great but it's weird Lary is a finalist at Safety, also. Considering they explicitly said that if someone was getting votes at multiple positions that they specified a single position for them and they would only be voted for there.
User avatar
Rupert Patrick
Posts: 1746
Joined: Sat Oct 11, 2014 7:53 pm
Location: Upstate SC

Re: Special teams finalists

Post by Rupert Patrick »

JohnTurney wrote:Kickers
Morten Anderson
Lou Groza
Adam Vinatieri
Jan Stenerud

Punters
Ray Guy
Yale Lary
Shane Lechler
Jerrell Wilson

Returners
Mel Gray
Devin Hester
Billy "White Shoes" Johnson
Brian Mitchell
Kickers should be Groza and Stenerud, but will be Vinatieri and either Groza or Stenerud, probably Groza.

Punters will be Lechler and Guy

Returners will be Hester and Johnson

Here are the career kicking charts for Anderson, Groza, Vinatieri, Stenerud and Lowery:

Image

As before, I'll have to explain many of these rankings, so I'll just cut and paste from the last time I posted a similar chart:

K% is short for kicking percentage, which is a little stat I came up with, and the formula is K% = 100* (XPM + 3*FGM)/(XPA + 3*FGA). In short, it is a ratio between how many points a kicker actually scored on his kicks, and how many he could have scored had he been successful on all of his kicks. A kicker with a K% of 90 means he was successful on converting 90 percent of all the points he attempted. A perfect score is obviously 100.

FG% is obviously field goal percentage.

PAL is Points Above League, and for each kicker in each season, the formula is: PAL = (KXPM + 3*KFGM) - ((KXPA * (LXPM - KXPM)/(LXPA - KXPA)) + 3* (KFGA * (LFGM - KFGM)/(LFGA - KFGA)).

PAL is basically points scored by the kicker, minus the kickers' extra point attempts multiplied by the league XP percentage (with the kicker stats removed), minus three times the kickers' field goal attempts multiplied by the league FG percentage (with the kickers stats removed). The result is the number of points above or below average the kicker was relative to the league (compared to how many points an average league kicker would have scored given the same number of field goal and extra point attempts). If the PAL is positive, the kicker is above average, and if the PAL is negative, the kicker is below average relative to that season.

P/PT is 100*PAL divided by kicker points. It puts a kickers' PAL score into the context of the number of points he scored.

PAL2 is more accurate and more complex than PAL. It's similar to PAL, except all field goals are not lumped together. In PAL2, all of a kickers' FG attempts are separated by distance, and he is compared relative to how the rest of the NFL was at each particular distance he attempted a field goal from. If a kicker attempted a 52-yard field goal, he is compared to how the rest of the league that season (except for himself) did in 52-yard field goals, and that success percentage is multiplied by the number of attempts he had at 52 yards, and that is done for all his attempts. Like I said, it is very complex, but much more accurate than PAL.

P2/PT is 100 *PAL2/Points scored

AAT is average attempted field goal distance, for the entire 2010-2018 era.

AMK is average made field goal distance, 2010-2018.

AMS is average missed field goal distance, 2010-2018.

PT/G is simple Points scored per game.

PAL/G is PAL divided by games played

PAL2/G is PAL2 divided by games played

The most important category is PAL2/G, which is about .5 for Groza, Stenerud and Lowery, meaning that over their careers, they are about a half point better per game than an average kicker from their era.

The two highest peak values for a kicker all time were Stenerud 1967-70, when he averaged about 1.5 PAL2/G over those four seasons, and Groza between 1952-54, when he averaged about 1.8 PAL2/G over those three seasons. Also, Groza had many clutch kicks in his career, and his field goal won the 1950 NFL Championship game. Stenerud's most famous FG attempt was probably the miss in the Christmas Day playoff game against Miami in 1971, and he booted three FG's in Super Bowl IV. Nick Lowery, on the other hand, never won any big playoff games with last-second field goals other than the 1993 OT playoff game against Pittsburgh, and he missed a last second field goal in a 17-16 loss to Miami in the 1990 Wild Card game. I've always had the three greatest kickers ever rated as Groza, Stenerud and Lowery, in no particular order, but I just don't think I can rate Lowery in the same class with Groza and Stenerud as the best of all time.
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
JohnTurney
Posts: 2220
Joined: Fri Oct 31, 2014 1:28 pm

Re: Special teams finalists

Post by JohnTurney »

Rupert Patrick wrote:
PAL/G is PAL divided by games played

PAL2/G is PAL2 divided by games played

.
What I did with this is use PAL/16...multily it times 16 games
that way, the numbers are not so tight and you can say it
in a per season context.

"The result is the number of points above or below average the kicker was relative to the league"
and to me per 16 games give some separation....

Also agree with you on your predictions. I think this was
just a typical excercise by the voters, not looking at
anything in depth, just a rubber stamp of conventional
wisdom.
JameisLoseston
Posts: 391
Joined: Wed Oct 16, 2019 12:39 am

Re: Special teams finalists

Post by JameisLoseston »

One thing I wonder about the older kickers - why did all of them have random really awful years mixed in with their usual good ones? Like, Groza and Blanda were prone to go 10/25 or worse out of absolutely nowhere, mixed in with years where they were over 60%. Blanda was total hot garbage on the Bears. No one was consistently hanging around the 50s. When Stenerud came along and the overall bar was raised by about 10%, he still sprinkled an 8/18 and a couple other low 50s in. The bar was yet higher in Lowery's time, but he never dipped below 70; was he the first truly consistent kicker?
User avatar
Rupert Patrick
Posts: 1746
Joined: Sat Oct 11, 2014 7:53 pm
Location: Upstate SC

Re: Special teams finalists

Post by Rupert Patrick »

JameisLoseston wrote:One thing I wonder about the older kickers - why did all of them have random really awful years mixed in with their usual good ones? Like, Groza and Blanda were prone to go 10/25 or worse out of absolutely nowhere, mixed in with years where they were over 60%. Blanda was total hot garbage on the Bears. No one was consistently hanging around the 50s. When Stenerud came along and the overall bar was raised by about 10%, he still sprinkled an 8/18 and a couple other low 50s in. The bar was yet higher in Lowery's time, but he never dipped below 70; was he the first truly consistent kicker?
The reason why the kickers of the pre-Stenerud era mixed good and bad seasons, is because they all pretty much played secondary positions, and if they were nursing an injury from their other position, it would affect their kicking. A guy like Blanda, to the Bears, was a QB first and a kicker second, he was an adequate kicker but nobody else on the team could out-kick him. Back then, kicking (and punting) was not a specialized role like it was today, where these days, a kicker starts kicking as a youngster and kicks all day long and never learns to play another position.

In the 40's and 50's, a guy like Pat Summerall or Bobby Layne would practice his regular position approximately 98 percent of the time and maybe try a few field goals during practice once a week. I guess in training camps back then they would try out various guys to be the kicker, and whoever kicked best got the job. Before 1950, you still had the substitution rules, so there was no such thing as a single kicker on a team, and in the 50's, rosters were still small and there wasn't much room for specialization. The earliest pure punter I could find was Dick Deschaines of Green Bay from 1955-58, and after he was out of the league, there wasn't a rush to use an entire roster spot just for a punter. The earliest pure kicker I could find was Ben Agajanian in 1945, but I think they were still using limited substitution in 1945 due to the war.

By the 60's this started to change, and the soccer-style kickers, and Stenerud in particular, could kick field goals from distances and success rates that seemed impossible a few years earlier, and suddenly it became worthwhile to invest an entire roster slot on one of these new-fangled soccer-style kickers, or a really good straight-on kicker as the profession suddenly became specialized, and the guys like Paul Hornung and Don Chandler who kicked and played another position were quickly phased out.

As far as the differing rates from one season to the next, you need to look at the distances of the misses, and they vary from season to season. The worse the team is, the longer the field goal tries often are, and the lower the field goal rates are for the kickers. Or, as I mentioned earlier, they could have been playing thru an injury.

Lowery was very consistent; he only had one really bad year in his career, and it was his final season.
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
SixtiesFan
Posts: 854
Joined: Sat Oct 11, 2014 8:04 pm

Re: Special teams finalists

Post by SixtiesFan »

Norm Van Brocklin was the punter for the Eagles and the Rams when he played for them. He averaged 43.1 yards a punt in his 1960 MVP season and 42.9 for his career.
User avatar
Rupert Patrick
Posts: 1746
Joined: Sat Oct 11, 2014 7:53 pm
Location: Upstate SC

Re: Special teams finalists

Post by Rupert Patrick »

JohnTurney wrote:
Rupert Patrick wrote:
PAL/G is PAL divided by games played

PAL2/G is PAL2 divided by games played

.
What I did with this is use PAL/16...multily it times 16 games
that way, the numbers are not so tight and you can say it
in a per season context.

"The result is the number of points above or below average the kicker was relative to the league"
and to me per 16 games give some separation....

Also agree with you on your predictions. I think this was
just a typical excercise by the voters, not looking at
anything in depth, just a rubber stamp of conventional
wisdom.
For my upcoming book (I can't really say upcoming, as it officially went out to the publisher last week; it won't be published until probably late next year) I used PAL and PAL2 per 16 games like you did in my ratings lists.
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
Post Reply