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There aren't going to be any big gains on punt returns, unless the opponent really messes up the punt play.
Brian Kelly insists on using the punt-safe formation, where it's done to guard against potential punt fakes, while maintaining coverage. There's not much real blocking going on the return, other than a couple of chips, and you'll almost never see the "wedge" of blockers forming.
Maybe if two or more folks on the punting team fall down, there could be an opportunity for a decent punt return, but that almost never happens.
To put it this way, you could put Rocket Ismail in his prime as the returner, and you'd still have very similar results, except when the opponent screwed up badly.
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Why hate on a walk on who has actually played some snaps??
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Boise St. is #1 in PR. New Mexico is #2. Northwestern #3. Middle Tennessee St. is #4. South Florida is #5.
Bama is #32. Oklahoma is #85. Ohio State is #127.
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I'm just noting that I don't see any correlation between success in PR and larger on-field success. ND is #81 in punt returns. What does that mean, big picture? Not sure. You could do the same thing with KRs. The top 10 statistically in KR is a collection of mediocre-to-bad teams. Meanwhile, Oregon is statistically worse than ND (#81 ) and Alabama is at the very bottom statistically (#118).
I completely understand that better field position is better than worse field position. That is definitional. Some commenters have posited that many HCs take the position that resources are better spent on things other than PR and KR. Sure, starting a drive at the 35 is preferable to starting at the 20. But I'd rather start at my 20 and gain several first downs rather than start at the 35 and go 3-and-out. At the end of the day, I just don't know that the familiar lines about ND's low statistical ranking on punt returns and kick returns amounts to much.
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