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By Bob Sturm Aug 26, 2019
I am going to shoot straight with you about this Morning After: I watched the Houston game fully to study the Cowboys’ special teams units. After seeing Joe Thomas block a punt and Cedrick Wilson spring a nice punt return, I had what I wanted to see. Let’s talk special teams, everyone. Gather ’round!
How big a deal can we make of a few special teams plays from Saturday night? Well, let’s take a quick look:
Both of these plays came off Houston punts and it helped that their offense brought very little to the table – especially after the Lamar Miller ACL injury reminded everyone that preseason games are best to be avoided altogether.
Anyway, here, Joe Thomas continued to dazzle in this preseason every time he steps on the field by coming off the edge, basically taking the ball off the foot of the punter and then rumbling and stumbling all the way into the end zone. The Cowboys have hardly done this in the regular season at all in the last 20 years with one in 2008 against the 49ers by Carlos Polk and one in Philadelphia in 2015 when Danny McCray blocked a punt and Kyle Wilber ran it in. That is it. In 25 years going back to 1994 (when profootballreference.com has records starting) until now, nearly 2,000 punts have been faced and only two have been blocked for a touchdown.
Thomas was already on the roster, but his special teams component could be huge so this play was nice.
This other punt from the 2nd Quarter doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, until you realize that Cedrick Wilson’s 32-yard return exceeds (easily) every punt return the Cowboys have attempted since November of 2017. Let’s credit him for showing some juice around the corner, but I really don’t think this should be the biggest return in almost two years.
Basically, the premise here is that the Cowboys special teams have ceased to be very special, and it is up to this team to fix that for 2019.
=====
The landscape of the NFL continues to evolve, and it is our job to keep up as best we can.
We can easily observe the sky-rocketing salaries at certain positions and the stagnant growth at others. Even as the pace slows at running back, it also seems true that the industry’s best running backs will still be written a check of roughly $1 million dollars per game in 2019. While it is unfortunate to see the RB group lagging behind — especially for those who play that position — a top seasonal salary in the $15-to-16-million range leaves those players financially comfortable. It is the relative slice of the pie that troubles those folks, not the ability to fill a bank account or seven.
Depending on your team’s worldview, mixed with a little blind luck, we can surmise that they will spend almost all of their cap resources on the offense and the defensive sides of the ball. Those units will also receive almost all of the draft resources and all of the benefit of the doubt whenever a coach on either side of the ball is trying to make the case that he should be able to use the final roster spot for his young guy who just needs more time.
According to our friends at Spotrac, here is how the Cowboys currently split up their cap resources. You can plainly see that even without tremendous raises for Ezekiel Elliott, Dak Prescott, and Amari Cooper (although Cooper’s number in 2019 is hefty), the Cowboys spend most of the $188 million salary cap on their offense:
We are wise to expect that number to continue growing. Additionally, the defense will need their own cash, and two players have already been inked to two huge deals this year: DeMarcus Lawrence and Jaylon Smith.
None of the players we’ve mentioned — or any of the top 10 salaries on the team — take part in special teams. Technically, the offensive line is on the field for field goals and extra points, but that only sort of counts as traditional special-teams punishment.
The kickoff and punt teams — cover and return — are filled largely with players who receive nothing more than the absolute league minimum and often are happy to be in the NFL in any capacity. They are involved in the most vicious collisions and do more damage to their bodies than pretty much anyone while receiving almost none of the proceeds. A few will get promoted to the more glamorous worlds of offense and defense if they handle this job well, but most will simply be discarded at the end of their minimum contracts and replaced with new 22-year-old models in four years’ time.
Tied to this reality is the fact that many players who are highly-rated and drafted out of college were stars at their universities and thus not asked to run special teams at that level either. They must now adjust to life in the NFL, but you are likely to be disappointed if you expect your top prospects to have any idea how to cover kicks.
Lastly, we know how close the games are in the NFL and how one score seems to decide most. Special teams may be part of the safety phase-out in the league, but how many games are decided by a big return, a turnover on special teams, a miss-or-make field goal or a bad snap?
In other words, you can have the best roster in the league and still be sabotaged by poor special teams. Yet this is a portion of the game that is almost completely ignored by fans, media and fantasy football.
This is why I insist on writing about it every year in August as teams build out their final roster. To the coaches and personnel people in this sport, it is a huge consideration as we approach cut-down day.
If you have read my stuff for any amount of time, you know that I use 1,000 snaps as a shorthand when it comes to the offense or defense. On average, offensive or defensive players have an opportunity to play 1,000 snaps in a season. Some teams play a bit more and some a bit less, but the average number is right around the same spot every year. That figure falls out to about 65 snaps per game on offense and 65 more for your defense, totaling about 130 plays from scrimmage in all.
However, we are still missing the numbers you’re about to see below: About 28 snaps a game and 440 over the course of a year. You may see that the Cowboys’ numbers fell some in 2017-18, but this is more a function of low-possession games rather than a big shift for the sport. The Cowboys actively try to shorten games the moment they begin as they believe this increases their odds of winning. (Of course, Chip Kelly and Mike Leach try to add possessions to each game, believing that with more possessions they can gain more of an offensive advantage on the scoreboard, which therefore increases their odds at winning. This proves not everyone agrees on strategic tactics in this amazingly complex sport.)
TOTAL COWBOYS SPECIAL TEAMS SNAPS, 2011-18:
By Bob Sturm Aug 26, 2019
I am going to shoot straight with you about this Morning After: I watched the Houston game fully to study the Cowboys’ special teams units. After seeing Joe Thomas block a punt and Cedrick Wilson spring a nice punt return, I had what I wanted to see. Let’s talk special teams, everyone. Gather ’round!
How big a deal can we make of a few special teams plays from Saturday night? Well, let’s take a quick look:
Both of these plays came off Houston punts and it helped that their offense brought very little to the table – especially after the Lamar Miller ACL injury reminded everyone that preseason games are best to be avoided altogether.
Anyway, here, Joe Thomas continued to dazzle in this preseason every time he steps on the field by coming off the edge, basically taking the ball off the foot of the punter and then rumbling and stumbling all the way into the end zone. The Cowboys have hardly done this in the regular season at all in the last 20 years with one in 2008 against the 49ers by Carlos Polk and one in Philadelphia in 2015 when Danny McCray blocked a punt and Kyle Wilber ran it in. That is it. In 25 years going back to 1994 (when profootballreference.com has records starting) until now, nearly 2,000 punts have been faced and only two have been blocked for a touchdown.
Thomas was already on the roster, but his special teams component could be huge so this play was nice.
This other punt from the 2nd Quarter doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, until you realize that Cedrick Wilson’s 32-yard return exceeds (easily) every punt return the Cowboys have attempted since November of 2017. Let’s credit him for showing some juice around the corner, but I really don’t think this should be the biggest return in almost two years.
Basically, the premise here is that the Cowboys special teams have ceased to be very special, and it is up to this team to fix that for 2019.
=====
The landscape of the NFL continues to evolve, and it is our job to keep up as best we can.
We can easily observe the sky-rocketing salaries at certain positions and the stagnant growth at others. Even as the pace slows at running back, it also seems true that the industry’s best running backs will still be written a check of roughly $1 million dollars per game in 2019. While it is unfortunate to see the RB group lagging behind — especially for those who play that position — a top seasonal salary in the $15-to-16-million range leaves those players financially comfortable. It is the relative slice of the pie that troubles those folks, not the ability to fill a bank account or seven.
Depending on your team’s worldview, mixed with a little blind luck, we can surmise that they will spend almost all of their cap resources on the offense and the defensive sides of the ball. Those units will also receive almost all of the draft resources and all of the benefit of the doubt whenever a coach on either side of the ball is trying to make the case that he should be able to use the final roster spot for his young guy who just needs more time.
According to our friends at Spotrac, here is how the Cowboys currently split up their cap resources. You can plainly see that even without tremendous raises for Ezekiel Elliott, Dak Prescott, and Amari Cooper (although Cooper’s number in 2019 is hefty), the Cowboys spend most of the $188 million salary cap on their offense:
We are wise to expect that number to continue growing. Additionally, the defense will need their own cash, and two players have already been inked to two huge deals this year: DeMarcus Lawrence and Jaylon Smith.
None of the players we’ve mentioned — or any of the top 10 salaries on the team — take part in special teams. Technically, the offensive line is on the field for field goals and extra points, but that only sort of counts as traditional special-teams punishment.
The kickoff and punt teams — cover and return — are filled largely with players who receive nothing more than the absolute league minimum and often are happy to be in the NFL in any capacity. They are involved in the most vicious collisions and do more damage to their bodies than pretty much anyone while receiving almost none of the proceeds. A few will get promoted to the more glamorous worlds of offense and defense if they handle this job well, but most will simply be discarded at the end of their minimum contracts and replaced with new 22-year-old models in four years’ time.
Tied to this reality is the fact that many players who are highly-rated and drafted out of college were stars at their universities and thus not asked to run special teams at that level either. They must now adjust to life in the NFL, but you are likely to be disappointed if you expect your top prospects to have any idea how to cover kicks.
Lastly, we know how close the games are in the NFL and how one score seems to decide most. Special teams may be part of the safety phase-out in the league, but how many games are decided by a big return, a turnover on special teams, a miss-or-make field goal or a bad snap?
In other words, you can have the best roster in the league and still be sabotaged by poor special teams. Yet this is a portion of the game that is almost completely ignored by fans, media and fantasy football.
This is why I insist on writing about it every year in August as teams build out their final roster. To the coaches and personnel people in this sport, it is a huge consideration as we approach cut-down day.
If you have read my stuff for any amount of time, you know that I use 1,000 snaps as a shorthand when it comes to the offense or defense. On average, offensive or defensive players have an opportunity to play 1,000 snaps in a season. Some teams play a bit more and some a bit less, but the average number is right around the same spot every year. That figure falls out to about 65 snaps per game on offense and 65 more for your defense, totaling about 130 plays from scrimmage in all.
However, we are still missing the numbers you’re about to see below: About 28 snaps a game and 440 over the course of a year. You may see that the Cowboys’ numbers fell some in 2017-18, but this is more a function of low-possession games rather than a big shift for the sport. The Cowboys actively try to shorten games the moment they begin as they believe this increases their odds of winning. (Of course, Chip Kelly and Mike Leach try to add possessions to each game, believing that with more possessions they can gain more of an offensive advantage on the scoreboard, which therefore increases their odds at winning. This proves not everyone agrees on strategic tactics in this amazingly complex sport.)
TOTAL COWBOYS SPECIAL TEAMS SNAPS, 2011-18: