Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/680997
IRISH ANALYTICS BRIAN FREMEAU same kind of spotlight in a game this fall. After all, he takes the field only after something goes wrong on of- fense. The most valuable player in the spring game better not repeat as the most valuable player during the season or it's going to be a very long year, right? From my perspective, we have to dive deeper into the value of punting in order to give Newsome and other top collegiate punters their due. As with much of my college football stats work, field position is a criti- cal piece of the puzzle that is often overlooked. Traditional stats like average yards per punt may help identify punters that can simply blast the ball down field, but the resulting field position for the opponent is more critical for the team's success. A punter that av- erages 53 yards per punt but consis- tently puts the ball into the end zone for a touchback is less valuable than one that averages 43 yards per punt and pins the opponent deep. In non-garbage time possessions in college football last year, about one third of all punts (32.9 percent) resulted in an opponent possession that began inside the opponent's 20- yard line. Newsome was above aver- age in that category (38.0 percent) in 2015. He was even better in his fre- quency of punts that pinned an op- ponent inside the opponent's own 10-yard line. Newsome dropped 18.0 percent of his punts into that zone, which ranked as the 18th best rate nationally. The average distance of those par- ticular "pinned deep" punts is re- vealing. Newsome's punt average on punts that result in an opponent drive starting inside the opponent's 10-yard line is 44.8 yards — very close to his overall average punt dis- tance. Nationally, however, punts that result in that kind of opponent field position travel 6.8 yards fur- ther than the team's average punts overall. What accounts for that difference? Punt distance in these situations has everything to do with where on the field a team's offense sputtered be- fore it needed to punt. When the Irish punt closer to the opponent's end zone than the national average, it is a feather in its cap, not a knock on its punter. And yet, Newsome loses what could be an edge over his compe- tition in a traditional stat like punt average because the Notre Dame of- fense is good at moving the ball. The Irish offense isn't just good at moving the ball, it often capitalizes on its next possession following an opponent drive that starts deep in its own territory. On non-garbage pos- sessions following an opponent pos- session begun inside the opponent's own 10-yard line, Notre Dame scored a total of 43 points last year — the 10th most nationally. There are plenty of contributors to that success — the punt team that pins the opponent deep, the defense for playing well with the opponent