The "Fire Shawn Menenga" trend is a bit premature. But his unit has had a lot of problems in the return game. Crosby has been good. Their net punting is decent (12th). I can't find any stats on KO yards allowed. They are 13th best in average LOS per opponent drive-- the average starting field position for opponent drives is their own 28 yard line. They are 26th in terms of their own starting LOS per drive (their own 26 yard line).
So his unit is really, really bad in one particular area (returns), but fine most everywhere else. It's hard for me to put all of the blame on him for that given the options he's been provided in the return game.
The penalties on returns are way down.
Average return on punts may be the most deceiving stat in football because they do not account for all the bad things that can and do happen on those plays:
1 - Fumbles. A double whammy of possession loss and a mess of field position. Shepherd is now on the PS.
T2 - Block in the back and holding penalties. Each one wipes out any 10 yard return on another punt. These are particularly rankling on fair catches.
T2 - Letting the ball hit the ground instead of coming up in traffic to fair catch. This was a Davis specialty. Sometimes you get lucky. Ususally not. That can cost you 10 or even 20 yards in field position wiping out a like return.
3 - Brain fart fair catches inside the 5; letting it bounce will work out more often than not.
Long returns are valuable, but they are rare across the league anymore. Getting one will not change your season. The rules are such that there are no Hesters anymore who can impact games more often than rarely.
Frankly, if the Packers avoid all negative plays on punt returns and fair catch every d*mn one that's lot better than than netting a 10 yard average with one long return with a bunch of negative plays offsetting those returns over the course of the season.
Of course you would prefer both, clean play and long returns. Clean play, however, will suffice. And this crew is a lot cleaner than Zook's outfits.
KO returns? Meh. Again, the league is doing everything possible to kill this play. The preponderance are touchbacks. Patterson has the most KO runbacks this season with 19, about two per game. He's got a TD and he's second in average at 29.1. But on the 18 that were not TDs he's averaging 23.3, not even as good as a touchback. How many of those did he take out of the end zone? Subtract those end zone yards from the average relative to taking the touchback.
The priorties on KO returns are:
1. If it is in the end zone, don't take it out. Period. The one exception is a ball that's borderline near the goal line. You can't take the chance that it lands in the field of play and kicks backward as a free ball. I would not begrudge a guy lrunning it out from one yard deep. He's got only one pair eyes and he better not be looking at his feet.
2. If you must field the ball, don't fumble.
3. Don't block in the back or hold or put hands to the face or anything else that draws a flag.
4. Don't do what Carolina's guy did twice: fail to pick it up clean and get dumped at the 10 or 15 yard line.
Again, avoiding negative plays is more important than any one splashy return over he course of a season.
