by John Powers
RETURNING PUNTS vs. KICKOFFS
While the Patriots are reasonably productive in running back kickoffs and punts, they excel in bottling up opponents on returns. During the last couple of seasons their special teams have ranked among in the league’s top four for fewest yards allowed.
“The big difference, of course, is on kickoff returns. You get a chance to build up your speed. You get a chance to handle the ball cleanly. There’s nobody on top of you when you catch it, and you’re able to run and set up your blocks and hit things full speed through that point, usually between the 20- and 30-yard line, the returner gets a chance to set those blocks up and hit them and try to get through there.
“The punting game is a lot more situational. On kickoffs the ball is always kicked from the same place. Rarely is there a difference. There are some but they’re minimal, after a safety or that type of thing. But punting, the ball can be anywhere so the situation they’re punting in can be quite diverse and sometimes complex. Punters are very good at directional punting and kicking different types of punts—the end-over-end punts, spiral punts, spirals that don’t turn over and so forth. So the ballhandling is a little more complex and you have to deal with players around you as you’re catching the ball sooner or later.
Belichick fully focused, as always, during a 2007 training camp session. (photo by Barry Chin)
“Sometimes a punter will outkick his coverage, but the majority of the time there’s some decision-making involved. Whether to catch it and try to make the first coverage player or two miss to get the return started or fair catch it or to let it go and not catch the ball or to let it go over your head and let it go in the end zone for a touchback. So there’s a lot of decision-making on just whether to catch the ball and whether to catch it and run with it or whether to catch it and fair catch it that are played different than the kickoffs. And then in addition to that, you deal with defenders and coverage players that are on you a lot quicker on punt returns, so sometimes you only have a yard or two or a couple yards to get into space, make a guy miss, break a tackle, whereas the kickoff is much more of a buildup play.
“Because they’re so different a lot of times you don’t have the same player doing both. Because they’re so different I find the two plays fascinating and intriguing and a great part of the strategy of football…. That’s why I take an opposing view to the people who want to eliminate kickoffs from the game. I think it’s an exciting play. It’s a unique play and one that is a big momentum play because of what happened the play before. The score or possibly the two times at the start of the half where it’s a tone-setter or a pacesetter for that opening play. They’re played different and, of course, the same thing in the blocking. You get a chance to set up a return whereas on the punting side of it you have an option of trying to pressure the punter and block it or return it, but you have to return it from the line of scrimmage.
“You can’t drop off too far because of the possibilities of fakes, so you have to keep enough guys up at the line of scrimmage to ensure that the ball is punted. You have to ensure that you don’t get onside-kicked to but that’s much less frequent and the rules are in the kick returner team’s favor on the onside kick. So it’s a big gamble for the kicking team to do that as a surprise tactic. So the blocking patterns and techniques of blocking are quite different on the punt returns compared to what they are on kickoff returns.”
RETURNING KICKOFFS
“A big part of it is certainly judging the ball. The flight of the ball, the timing of the return, the judgment coming out of the end zone. There are so many kicks in the NFL that are in the end zone—even the ones that are brought out a lot of times are multiple yards deep. So there’s all those judgments. Then there’s understanding how to set up the blocks on the blocking pattern of the return. It’s not just running to daylight.
“Wherever [the returner] goes, everybody else goes to, so it’s being able to set up the blocks for the front line so that they can keep leverage on the defenders and then he can cut off them. When you’re blocking on a kick return, if you don’t know where the runner is then that’s really hard for you to put yourself in position between yourself and the defender to make the block if he runs different directions. But if he runs to a certain point, then you can position yourself so that you can get between your man and where he’s going to end up.
The coach in purposeful stride during the 2013 camp. “We don’t have forever.” (photo by Jim Davis)
“Maybe that’s where he’s going and maybe that’s where he starts but then the play and the design is to run somewhere else and you’re able to position yourself between the man and where the runner is. So there’s a discipline and a timing and a setting of those blocks up that’s important for those guys to get. Whether they get that in college, I don’t know. I just know that the fundamental of a good kickoff returner is to be able to handle the ball cleanly, have explosive speed and decision-making, set up the blocks, and then, when there’s a seam, get through it.”
RETURNING FROM THE END ZONE
“You’re seeing guys come out from seven, eight, nine, nine-and-a-half yards deep now that you probably wouldn’t have seen a while back…. When you tell a kicker to just bang away, sometimes those kicks that are coming down seven, eight yards deep in the end zone have a 3.8 [second] hang time, too. So it’s not the same. There’s a difference between two yards deep and four or five hang time and nine yards deep and 3.8 hang time. I’d rather be nine yards deep. There’s a trade-off there and I think the returners are definitely aware of that. The guys that are going for distance, trying to touchback it, yeah, the balls are deeper, but many of them are with less hang time and sometimes significantly less hang time. That changes it, too. It’s not all about how deep the ball is. There’s certainly a hang time element involved as well.”
SHORT KICKOFF RETURNER
“That’s definitely a key role on the team. It’s like the personal protector on the punt team. It’s the last line of defense for the returner…. Sometimes he cleans up on blocks. Sometimes he’s assigned to a specific guy, but usually he would have to weave his way through some traffic, like the wedge or another coverage player to get to his assignment. You don’t want him blocking the first guy down because there would be too much penetration. Normally he’s on more of a second-level player or he’s looking to take some kind of leakage. If [it’s] a right return maybe he takes the leakage from the left side so that nobody catches the returner from behind. But he has to make that decision of ‘Is the guy close enough or can we bypass him and go to somebody else?’
“That all gets into the relationship between him and the returner and the track that the returner is on. Being able to know where he is, know who you have to block, who you don’t have to block, and then making decisions in terms of getting to your man through traffic so that you can get to your assignment without screwing the returner up. I’d say there’s definitely a lot to that position. It’s a hard position to play. It’s kind of a combination of being the fullback in the running game but you’re dealing with a lot more space and lot more decision-making. Sometimes those guys are reading three, four, five different people on one play, depending on what happens.”
KICKING AWAY FROM RECEIVERS
“The most important thing for us is our field position at the end of the play and how far out we can get the ball for our offense to take over. That’s the goal, not who handles it or any of that. What’s our starting field position? We just try to maximize whatever those opportunities are. Wherever the kick goes, that’s something we can’t control. Once it’s kicked we can handle it properly, make the right adjustments, and have returns that are more favorable or advantageous for those types of kicks. You can’t necessarily always count on that.
“It’s like golf, it’s situational. Sometimes you’re trying to kick it to the left or kick it to the right. Hang time’s more important than distance. The quickness of getting the
punt off is more important than the distance on it and so forth and so on. There’s a lot of situational punting that plays into the return game as well. If they situationally kick you, whether it be directionally or mortar kicks or squib kicks or overload the coverage with the kick and all those kinds of things, then those plays are a little different than other plays where they just kick it in a more conventional fashion…. So we always have to work on those and be ready for them. We know we’re going to get them, potentially, from any team. Kicking’s not just how far you can kick it and in the return game it’s not just how far they kick it to you. There’s a lot of other things that play into it.”
PUNT RETURNERS
“A punt returner can’t be watching the guys run down the field when he’s catching the ball. But while the ball is in the air there’s a short amount of time, a second or two, when he can start to get an idea of how the coverage is getting displaced, as opposed to a kickoff return where everybody is in their lane and starts down the field. On the punt team by the time the ball is snapped and the blocking occurs and guys get off the line it’s not usually just the wave of guys.
“There is some kind of displacement in the coverage. You can get a feel for what kind of depth the gunners have. A good returner takes the ball off the punter’s foot, sees it start to pick up the flight in the air, takes a look at how the coverage is starting to unfold and come down the field and get a sense of what the opportunities might be. Then, as the ball is coming in he has to get a feel for how close or how dangerous those guys are to hitting him when he catches the ball, whether to fair catch it and that type of thing.
“So, a lot of decision-making there in a pretty short amount of time. Some of that depends on what the return is and what we’re trying to set up and what we’re trying to do. There’s definitely a lot of judgment and decision-making involved there, no question…. Sometimes it’s better to make no decision than make the wrong one… sometimes you’re better off just getting away from the ball rather than trying to catch it in traffic or catch it on the run or put yourself in a spot where you could lose the ball.”
IDENTIFYING POTENTIAL PUNT RETURNERS
“Put them back there and watch them catch them. Eventually that’s what it comes to. You put them back there, see how they handle the ball, coach them a little bit. The flight of the ball, teach them how to read the kick and so forth, how it’s going to break and whether it’s long, short, breaking left or right, whatever it happens to be. If they show promise then keep working with them…. It’s like a lot of other skills. It can be developed, it can be improved. It doesn’t mean it happens with everybody, but it could if a player has good skills for it, if he has good judgment, can handle the ball. I mean, that’s the biggest thing, is the ball handling.
Belichick at ease during Super Bowl week before the 2015 showdown with Seattle. (photo by Jim Davis)
“Kickoff returns, there’s no one on you for the most part so you have plenty of time to catch the ball. You’re not under pressure to make the decision as to whether to fair catch it or to catch it. You might make a decision if you want to bring it out of the end zone or not but that’s different than actually handling the ball with guys around you and having to deal with them almost as soon as you touch the ball. Catching the ball and judging the ball, especially here—we’re not playing in a dome—so every kick is a little bit different based on the wind and the way the ball comes off the punter’s foot and so forth. That’s a big skill for a punt returner, is just ball judgment and ball handling and decision-making. Whether to catch it, fair catch it, let it go, so forth. A lot more decision-making involved there so that really is experience. The ballhandling is not a natural thing because it can be improved, but to some degree it’s a natural thing.”
PUNTING VARIABLES
“Punting is a lot different than kicking off. There’s not a lot of kickoff situations, usually. You’re just trying to kick the ball high and deep, like standing out there on the driving range with your driver. But punting, it’s a whole different ballgame. You know, where you’re punting the ball 50 yards plus. Do they have eight guys up? Do they have six guys up? What’s the rush look like? How does that affect the ball handling? How does that affect the return where you’re trying to place the ball based on wind, based on possibly the defensive alignment? Are they one deep or two deep? Is there a key on where the return is going to go? Do you want to kick away from their returner? There’s a lot of things that go into just punting the ball. Put the ball down on the 35-yard line for a punt and there’s a lot of things that go into that play, more so than kicking off.”
PUNT COVERAGE
“Every punt is different. There’s a six-man box, there’s a seven-man box, there’s an eight-man box, there’s an overloaded box. Who are the edge rushers? What’s the field position? What’s the down and distance? Who’s the returner? The wind, the return tendencing… are they vising [double-teaming] the gunner? Are they vising both gunners? Do they have a key guy that sets the return that’s the point-of-attack guy in the return game? Are we going to kick away from him or whatever the case may be? Who are their game-plan rushers? How do we handle guys coming off the gunners? The corner roles, the fake corner roles and all of that. The personal protector is a critical guy in all of that…. Everybody up front being on the same page, being able to pick up all of the different twists and having to involve a guy with his head between his legs as a blocker, especially when they put good rushers on that guy. That’s usually where you get one of their best guys, so the challenge of snapping and blocking but also helping that guy with his block because he can’t see. And if they twist when he’s snapping the ball, which they do, then other people have to come in play there.
“So it’s really a great team play. The gunners not only making tackles but downing balls and playing with proper leverage and getting the ball to the other coverage players so they can be effective…. It’s a game within a game, it really is. It’s a one-play situation, but if you punt seven or eight times in a game probably five of them are going to be unique. One or two might repeat. You might have a second plus-50 punt or a second backed-up punt with the same direction or the same wind or whatever it is. But there’s a lot of variety in those plays and the later it goes in the game then the more it becomes a situational game. A lot of times the yards aren’t that important. Whether it’s 35 or 40—it’s nice if it’s 40 but that’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is that it’s not minus-20.”
PERSONAL PROTECTOR
“He has several important jobs. The personal protector handles the communication on the punt team in terms of protection. If they bring eight players up to potentially rush the punt with the two other guys covering the gunners, you would have to block eight and you’ve got to get that right. You want to block that in the most advantageous way for your punt team, so making the calls as to how to handle the protection, who’s going to take who, who’s going to go where, and if that number diminishes, whether it goes from eight to seven to six. Or sometimes there’s six guys in there, like five-and-one guy stacks.
Belichick exulting after the destruction of Denver in their 2011 divisional playoff game at Gilette. (photo by Jim Davis)
“When you have more people than they do you can organize it so you can try to create a free guy. You have eight guys there. Which guy do you want to try to get free? So it’s kind of a quarterback of the punt team… there is a lot of communication and decision-making in terms of protection and organizing the coverage from a blocking standpoint. He is the last line of defense, so that is another important decision. When to release into coverage, when to stay a little bit longer and protect the punter, when to leave his guy to get somebody else who may be more dangerous—that maybe a blocker had missed in front of him—and those kind of things.”
BLOCKING FIELD GOALS
“Back in the ’70s, you had the jumpers, you had the Matt Blairs an
d the guys like that that would have five, six, seven blocks a year. That was eliminated. The center is probably the weakest by far protector on any team’s field goal unit but you’re not allowed to hit him. You can’t line up on him so that’s another opportunity you don’t have. You can’t overload, so you can only put six guys to a side. You don’t have that extra guy to create that extra gap, so you can’t do that. You can’t push anybody from behind.
“I’d say it’s a lot harder because you have a lot less options. And on top of that, the kickers are better. The surfaces are much, much better. You don’t have some of the bad fields where it was hard just to kick the ball, period. The baseball stadiums and the infield that got sodded and all that. You’re not dealing with those kind of situations. Kicking off the dirt, you don’t see that any more. The kickers have gotten better and the conditions have gotten much better and you’re not allowed to do a lot of things that you would normally do to try to block a kick. So, yeah, it’s gotten harder.”
9. Strategy
While Bill Belichick justifiably is renowned as a master strategist adept at turning a game’s pivotal points in his team’s favor, much of his acumen comes from his relentless focus on the present. “What’s important to us is this game and our preparation for this game and our performance in this game,” he said.
The Patriots prepare meticulously for each week’s opponent, paying particular attention to individual matchups, to how rival players may be neutralized, and to positions where the rival lacks depth.
At the same time, following the club’s Next Man Up approach, the coaching staff makes sure that every player is ready to step in whenever circumstances call. “Anyone could be out after one or two plays,” observed Belichick. “You don’t want to be drawing up stuff on the sideline.”
While the game plan is tailored to what the staff expects is most likely to work, Belichick has conditioned his assistants and players to react to whatever is happening in the moment and to go off script as needed.