Special Circumstances

Much was made last season of Notre Dame's positively horrid offensive production, ranking 119th out of 119 teams. Just about any moderately engaged Notre Dame football fan could tell you that little stat. But what many, perhaps most, Notre Dame football fans don't know is that the Notre Dame special teams were nearly as bad; ranking 94th in Kickoff Returns and 89th in Kickoff Return Defense. It has been said many times that one of the fastest ways to make a bad team a lot better is through special teams. So just how far do the Irish need to go in 2008 to get better on special teams?

In October, I began to really pay attention to the kickoff teams of Notre Dame, and here's what I found of the 2007 Irish up to that point in the season:

Notre Dame’s Kickoff Return Team:

• Receives the kickoff, on average, just ahead of the 9 yard line (9.05).
• Returns a kickoff an average of 19.2 yards
• And starts a drive after a kickoff, on average, at the 28.25 yard line, meaning, on average, they must drive 72 yards for a touchdown on possessions after a kickoff.

Notre Dame’s Kickoff Team:

• Kicks the ball, on average, to the 11 yard line (10.92)
• Allows the opponent to return the ball an average of 25.23 yards.
• On average, force the ND defense to begin defending the field after a kickoff on the opponent’s 36 yard line (36.15), meaning they have an average of 64 yards of buffer between them and their end-zone.

Now, that post was done just after the Purdue game - 5 games into the season. Here's what the stats for kickoff and kickoff return look like for the entire season:

Click here if you can't see the embedded spreadsheet.

In case it's not immediately obvious, "Opponent Kicks" represent kickoffs in which ND was the return team. "ND Kicks" represent kickoff that ND kicked and then defended, and to help key the rest of that sheet, just understand that ND's kickoffs usually made it to the 10.4 yard line, after which, the opposition usually returned it about 23.5 yards to the 34ish yard line. Meanwhile, ND's opponents' kicks usually made it to about the 10.1 yard line, after which ND generally returned the kicks 18.5 yards to the 28 yard line or so.

Now, as bad as the season final statistics are for the Irish, they actually did improve over their 5-game marks. For example, after 5 games, ND was the 103rd ranked kickoff defending team in the country. So they improved by some relative measure over 24 teams over the course of the rest of the season. They also closed the gap between the top-25 teams in return yardage (#25, Wyoming, averaged 23.19 return yards at end of season) from 5.78 yards to 3.5 yards. So the improvement in ranking wasn't simply because the other bad teams got even worse.

In October, I did write one thing (at least) that was really dumb.

Our kickers, who are much maligned in typical conversation (”Why can’t we recruit a kicker who can kick it into the end zone!?”), are not the problem. Compared to our opponents, they’re only giving up a little less than 2 yards per kick. That should be a pretty trivial amount. And, in fact, we’ve only faced one opponent in 5 that has consistently placed the ball in the end-zone (PSU). Granted, there’s no available statistics for things like hang-time or “pooch kick,” so these numbers may mislead a bit.

And the end-of-season stats show that ND's kicks were making it almost as far down field as the opposition's, but it was dumb because I forgot to take a look at one really critical kickoff statistic: Touchbacks. I didn't make the same mistake this second time around, and it's clear that, unless the kickers are being explicitly told not to accomplish touchbacks, a lot of the kickoff misery is on their shoulders. Notre Dame opponents averaged 10.25 touchbacks though the season last year. Notre Dame didn't record a single touchback. That's 10 times during the season that ND's opponents didn't have to worry about their opposition getting great field position. 10 times that ND opponents didn't give their defenses craptastic circumstances. And 10 times ND didn't do their own defense any favors. Only one ND opponent in 2007, UCLA, failed to record a touchback. In fact, only ND, UCLA, Arkansas State, La.-Lafayette, Mississippi, and Syracuse manage to not record a touchback in 2007. See a trend among those teams? Hell, even the 119th ranked team in Kickoff Defense, Utah State, managed to record 9 touchbacks. So if you want a preview of ND's improvement or decline in special teams now that Charlie is taking over, watch for reports of how long the kicks are flying.

And here's another dumb thing I said...

ND’s kickoff and kickoff returns teams are bad, but they’re really only bad in a relative context to the performance of other schools. Giving up 8 yards of field position via the kickoff game is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s also doesn’t look like it would be the source of a ton of problems.

And I have to tip my hat to one of the guys at BGS (can't remember which) who pointed out on one of the ND fan forums that 8 yards or so is nearly an entire 1st down of production that the opposition would face in trying to score. When you think of it like that, 8 yards is a lot. The stat did improve as the season went on, dropping the difference in field position to about 6 yards, but there's still a mental edge that the Irish were giving up by averaging their own starts in the rather "bleh" range of 28 yard line while opponents got to start their drives, typcally, around the 35. The field looks a lot shorter from the 35; particularly when the defense in front of you is exhausted.

I do look for serious improvement in the field-position losses here. If I could give ND a target, I'd say I expect them to level off the difference completely. In 2007, the 30th ranked kickoff defense team, Mississippi, gave up 19.91 yards on average. At the same time, the 30th ranked kickoff return team, Akron, have a 22.7 yard return average. So let's set those numbers as goals this year. (Funny, by the way, that Mississippi, despite 0 touchbacks, still managed a top-30 kickoff defense. Stats are so weird sometimes.)

I think the goals are attainable. For one, I think it's always very helpful to special teams squads when the Head Coach takes charge of the unit. Reading through Phil Steele, it always seems that the really excellent Special Teams are lead by the HC. Further, with ND's new-found depth on the roster, there will be a lot of very capable guys looking for more opportunities to get on the field. What better way to do that than to excel on special teams, thus making your HC happy?