Do These Punting Stats and Rush References Make Me Look Sexy? (Mailbag Pt. 2)

Also: Iggles anxieties and schadenfreude, some Hall of Fame discussion, a few personal musings, and eight playoff teams walk into a bar ..

This is the second part of a two-part mailbag. Most of the questions pertaining to this weekend’s playoff games and the latest coaching carousel news can be found in part one. And I apologize to all readers whose questions were not covered! There were lots and lots!

On a scale of "not at all" to "it's Philadelphia, they will screw up eventually", how confident are you in the Eagles? – Luis Guilherme

The Eagles should beat the Rams. I think they lack the consistent/conventional passing game necessary to beat the Lions or win the Super Bowl. I can’t wait for them to lose 34-33 in the NFC Championship Game and hear my neighbor tell me the next morning, “Nick Sirianni’s gotta go.”

As an Eagles fan, do you find more pleasure in the Giants’ complete and utter ineptness or the Cowboys running in place while going nowhere? As much as you hate both teams, the Cowboys have done more to the Eagles, right? – Kesavan Menon

Eagles fans over the age of about 40 had America’s Team and/or the early-90s Wowboys jammed down our throats, and we were tormented by stereotypical frontrunner fans in the high school halls, in the shopping malls, in the basement bars …

The Lawrence Taylor Giants of that era were more relatable tormentors: they drove down the turnpike, slaughtered our quarterbacks, then drove home. They weren’t glittery oligarchs who turned our friends and neighbors evil. So the Cowboys were much more bitter rivals, though the situation may be different for fans who lived closer to Exit 7A than Exit 3.

I don’t think the Cowboys have had many young fans in the Philly area for decades; the scattered few I have encountered tend to give off a long-suffering, defiant vibe that is almost socially acceptable in Philly. Most Eagles fans worry/seethe most about whichever divisional foe is the most serious threat. Right now, that is the Commanders.

Also, I was a Giants beat writer for 45 minutes in 2011 and as much a member of the “New York media” as anyone can claim to be for many years, so I don’t “hate” the Giants so much as pity them.

Why do folks assume great offensive/defensive coordinators make great head coaches? Does the data support the notion that most coordinators who move into the head role are successful? Because it feels like we deal with a lot of Nathaniel Hacketts and Adam Gases taking on a role they had no business having to begin with. – Chip O’Connell

The data reveals that most people who become head coaches, good or bad, were formerly offensive/defensive coordinators. After all, what else would they be? Insurance salesmen? Underwear models? Vampire slayers?

The NFL head coaching candidate pool consists of coordinators, college coaches and former head coaches who have moved on to television or the like. The track record for college coaches in the NFL is famously awful. Former head coaches were once head coaches, which means they originally came from one of the other two pools. So we are back to the coordinators.

Rarely, a positional coach like Andy Reid (Brett Favre’s quarterback coach, initially) or a special teams coordinator like John Harbaugh will get a job. I don’t think their success indicates that teams should promote positional coaches quickly or that a special teams coordinator is that much different from the other coordinators. We’re just looking at two individuals talented enough to take unusual career paths.

Anyway, nearly all of the successful AND unsuccessful NFL head coaches were initially hired from the coordinator pool. Unsuccessful coaches outnumber successful ones significantly. Hence the sense that hiring a coordinator is a bad idea.

01. Favorite game day snack (excluding lunch/dinner)?

02. Did you watch Creed III?

03. Lamar or Josh for MVP?

04. Favorite football movie of all-time?

05. Do you think Jalen's play at times was due to rust or Sirianni's brilliant play calling? – Kyle Lutz

01. Ten mild wings from a particular nearby tavern.

02. I watched the first Creed but missed the next two. I also checked out on Rocky after Rocky III.

03. Lamar Jackson blew Allen away statistically this year. Allen was also great, but I hate the idea of him winning MVP because the Ravens defense committed so many penalties that it cost Jackson WINZ.

04. Friday Night Lights is fantastic. The original The Longest Yard, politically incorrect as it may now be, was both powerful and hilarious at times. And I love Harold Lloyd’s silent-era classic The Freshman, which has a bunch of jokes from 100 years ago about how college football has gotten too big and powerful.

05. Notice how Kellen Moore always escapes criticism? Hurts looked rusty. The Packers defense is great. And Hurts’ unwillingness to just quickly check down over the middle or into the flats is a persistent problem.

Do you have any statistical data that punters were better this season in placing punts inside the 10-yard line, or even inside the 5, than in the past? Almost every punt near midfield ends in that area. Is it a rational tactic for for teams with good/great defense but bad/terrible offense and accurate punter to not to go for it on 4th down, and instead punt and hope for turnover or better field position? – Michal Drgoň

My initial research suggests that punters are worse than ever at pinning opponents inside the 10-yard line.

In the 2024 regular season, 8.6% of all punts pinned opponents that deep. In 2023, 10.6% of punts did so. In 2022, the number was 11.9%. Backtracking to 2015, the number was a whopping 17.7%!

Of course, we are missing a massive co-variable: the decline of punting on the opponent’s side of midfield. There were 2,432 punts in the 16-game 2015 regular season, or 4.8 per team per game. There were 2,047 punts in the 17-game 2024 regular season, or 3.8 per team per game.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the tools to easily separate punts by field position. But those two missing punts per game (one for each team) were surely replaced by a combination of long field goals and conversion attempts on the other side of midfield: prime punt-and-pin situations.

Gross punting averages have also been going up for years because punters are no longer asked to loft a 30-gross-yard kick from the opponent’s 40-yard line very often. Punters have probably gotten a little better as well, but over the short timelines involved, the tactical difference must be having a greater impact on the numbers than weight training or something.

When it comes to fourth-down tactics, everything is evolving more rapidly than even the ultra-authoritative bots on social media can keep up with. But I don’t think there’s any bad offense/great defense scenario in which, say, fourth-and-1 at midfield should be a punting down (unless a team is leading late in the fourth quarter or the like). Ever-improving field goal accuracy has changed strategic tendencies. Punting is more of an effect than a cause.

New kickoff year in review? — Nathaniel Bennett

There were 1.7 kickoff returns per team per game in the 2024 regular season. Those returns gained an average of 27.6 yards per return. There were seven touchdowns.

There were 1.1 kickoff returns per team per game in the 2023 regular season. Those returns gained an average of 23.0 yards per return. There were four touchdowns.

Wild Card Weekend alone featured a fumbled kickoff return by the Packers which had a major impact on the results and some impressive returns by Ty Johnson of the Bills and Luke McCaffrey of the Commanders. Ty Chandler’s 38-yarder on Monday night gave the Vikings a flicker of life in the third quarter. Return capability and kick coverage mean something again.

I see the new kickoff rule as a huge success: more exciting/high-impact returns, much less unnecessary contact, more tactical options. I also heard much less this new rule sux grousing in the second half of the season from folks who spent the last decade going potty during kickoffs. The NFL may still want to tweak starting field position, but I think this rule is here to stay. And I REALLY want it adopted at the college and (especially) high school levels.

Who will be the first draftee to refuse to go to the NFL because he's unwilling to take a pay cut? – Jeff Neuman

Arch Manning. (You knew that was the answer!) Though guys like Carson Beck are low-key doing it now.

A Quick Commercial

Are you listening to, watching or otherwise interfacing with the Between the Hashmarks podcast? You really should. Matt Lombardo brings his rolodex of insider info, years as an Eagles/Giants beat writer and Philly radio experience to the table. I show up wearing a hat and complain about everything. We both talk with our hands a lot.

You can find the show on Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Or on Matt’s Substack. Come check it out!

Is Sam Darnold Available Now? And, Who Would Want Him? (PODCAST)

MOAR QUESTIONS

Ben Roethlisberger's a Hall of Famer, right?

During his career, I (a staunch Ravens fan) didn't even question that Ben was "obviously" a Hall of Famer. But someone said something in a Football Outsiders comment thread a couple years ago that gave me pause. I had commented that Big Ben was pretty solidly the 4th-best QB in the league for the main stretch of his career. That seemed pretty solid to me, for someone who played when obvious Mt. Rushmore candidates Brady/Peyton/Brees were all in their prime. An unusual era.

This commenter replied to me something like, "Shyah! Nothing says Hall of Fame like being the 4th-best at your position!" That well-crafted bit of snark wormed into my brain and ate all my Roethlisberger-contextualizing. – JimZipCode

Ben Roethlisberger is a Hall of Famer. When I spoke to Hall selectors for an upcoming feature, a few mentioned Roethlisberger as a surefire Hall of Famer, in contrast to another quarterback we were discussing.

Lots of folks have idiosyncratic head-canons about the definition of a Hall of Famer. Some of them aren’t even selection committee members! (Rimshot.) But seriously, fourth-best quarterback of his (lengthy) era is a PRO-Hall of Fame argument. John Elway ranked around fourth, or lower, for most of his career. Terry Bradshaw probably did, too. If Bradshaw didn’t, then Fran Tarkenton did. Roughly where do we think Sonny Jurgensen ranked in the 1960s? And these were eras with fewer teams and shorter careers.

No, the fourth-best guard of his era is probably not a Hall of Famer. We don’t pretend guards are nearly as valuable in any other situation and should not make such pretense when it comes to the Hall of Fame.

What single still image, even if it's only in your mind, best embodies football for you? Also, who is the greatest rhythm guitarist of all time? – Kevin Toland

I feel like I am supposed to say Chuck Bednarik standing over Frank Gifford or Y.A. Tittle kneeling in defeat. But I keep circling back to Bill Belichick drinking orange juice while reporters wait to interview him at the winter meetings. The tableau illustrates the absurdity of the NFL from the point of view of someone who spent some time covering it. There’s a man of great importance trying to have a little breakfast while reporters circle him, and he is belligerently making them wait, or perhaps wisely defending what should be a moment of personal time. And all of the reporters flew down to those meetings just for five minutes with Belichick, who will spend that time disdainfully offering as little of anything approaching human communication as he possibly can. It is all captured in one photo. A masterpiece.

John Lennon may have been the best rhythm guitarist of all time. But I have become more impressed by AC/DC’s Malcolm Young as I have gotten older. It’s always the same three chords. It’s often the same tempo. It’s absolute juvenilia. Yet it feels groovy and timeless. Young, as a guitarist/composer, made simple, disposable music feel ALIVE. He’s the reason you will still hear AC/DC as the default “hard rock” on, say, the soundtrack to a Pixar movie.

Watching the 30 for 30 on the New York Sack Exchange made me think of a couple of questions:

1) Is the sack record as soft as I think it is? If the current record wasn’t even in the top ten in 10-15 years, I would not be surprised.

2) Does Gastineau have a legitimate HOF beef? His numbers are very interesting: 107 total sacks, including seasons with 22, 20 & 19. Three-time 1st team All-Pro.

Short, impactful careers have gotten a number of players in, and I think he got dinged for specializing before it became fashionable. I am curious about what you think about him and his chances. — Sheepnado

I don’t think either sack record is all that soft.

The single-season record of 22.5 (officially, Michael Strahan, 2001/T.J Watt, 2021) or 23.0 (unofficially, Bubba Baker, 1978) has not been challenged in three years. Watt is the only active player with a 20-sack season, though Pro Football Reference still considers Justin Houston to be active. Team sack totals league-wide have hovered in the 2.4 sacks-per-team-per-game range for years. Obviously, the 17-game season makes all records easier to break, but I don’t see a future where five guys per year are notching 20-plus sacks or anything.

As for Bruce Smith’s all-time record of 200.0 sacks, Von Miller is the active leader with just 129.5. Watt has 108 sacks but is 30 years old. He could record a dozen sacks per year for five years and still be 32 sacks short of Smith at age 35.

The Seniors Committee inducted Gastineau’s Sack Exchange teammate Joe Klecko into the Hall of Fame in 2023. That probably bars the door for Gastineau, who was a flashier player with a reputation as a hot dog and a headache.

Gastineau and Tiki Barber are two players I point to whenever someone claims the Pro Football Hall of Fame has a “New York Bias.” I think the opposite is often true, as New York is more likely to amplify a player’s weaknesses than his strengths.

Were there any Packers fans at the bar when you watched the Wild Card game (I'm assuming you were at a local bar)? There were no Eagles fans at my neighborhood Brooklyn, New York bar--just Packers fans. And, if there were Packers fans at your bar, did they escape with their cheeseheads intact? – Dwight Jon Zimmerman

I cannot hang out at the bar for late-window Sunday games. If I did, I would not be able to complete Monday’s Walkthrough in a timely/sober/readable manner. (I cannot slurp Diet Coke at a bar during an Eagles playoff game!)

While it is not unusual to see fans wearing the jerseys of out-of-town teams who are not facing the Eagles at the bar on a typical Sunday, it is exceedingly rare to see fans wearing opposing-team regalia on any gameday, let alone Eagles playoff gameday. Iggles fans are not the monsters they are made out to be. Neither are sharks. But you don’t dive into shark-infested waters wearing scuba gear made out of raw meat.

Imagine all the remaining playoff teams are in a dive bar. What dive bar personality are they, what is the offense drinking, and what is the defense drinking? — substack user

I totally misread this question as “Create a dive bar to reflect the personality of each team.” And since my interpretation is easier to write, here we go:

• The Baltimore Ravens are a little shack out on the Bohemia River where they seat you at a picnic table and serve piles of crabs on top of newspaper and ice-cold buckets of Duff. You go there in September, and it’s heaven: cool breezes off the water, fun middle-of-nowhere vibe. Then you go back in January, and it’s freezing, the locals are hibernating for winter, and it’s no longer crab season, so you end up eating Old Bay fries before rushing back to your car for warmth in disappointment.

• The Buffalo Bills have the best wings in town according to Yelp. The neighborhood isn’t TOO sketchy, and while the “decor” is mostly refrigerator cases full of six-packs, it reads as charming. But the more you hang around, the more you realize that the locals are strangely twitchy and aggro. Someone asks for ranch dressing instead of blue cheese, the whole place goes silent, and you reach the exit just before someone piledrives the ranch guy into a pool table.

• The Detroit Lions are just the opposite. It looks like a scary biker bar from the outside. But everyone is surprisingly friendly and inclusive. It’s a jolly time until you ask for your tab after two beers. “There’s a 44-drink minimum here,” the leather daddy behind the bar tells you. You realize he is serious, you are too frightened to argue, and you wake up three days later wondering if you really went for it on 4th-and-20 with a six-point fourth-quarter lead. (Which may or may not be a metaphor for something.)

• Show up at the Houston Texans bar and their defense be like …

This is getting oddly homoerotic, so let’s change lanes.

• The Kansas City Chiefs are Andy’s Original AUTHENTIC Kansas City BBQ, a chain restaurant that just opened a new location across from your local Wegman’s. The place seems cool at first. But the “authentic blues” playlist is mostly Blues Traveler, the waitress does not want to talk about her Swiftie Flair, and the ribs come swimming in this viscous magenta-hued “sauce” that tastes like someone dumped 20 bushels of rotten tomatoes into a vat of Mrs. Butterworths. “The original location near Arrowhead Stadium is much better,” your buddy tells you, and you believe him.

• The Los Angeles Rams are not a dive bar, but a douchey upscale hotel bar where Sean McVay keeps making eyes at your wife while your wife keeps making eyes at Puka Nacua. Matthew Stafford still hangs out at the Lions bar.

• The Philadelphia Eagles are Paddy’s, of course.

• The Washington Commanders are a chic little outdoor popup full of interesting young people in an artsy neighborhood. You are not cool enough to even know where it is and would not fit in if you went. Sorry.

Some Lifestyle Questions

Gonna pull back the veil on my glamorous lifestyle before we wrap.

Would you comment on the value of covering the Super Bowl on site now that you must cover your own expenses? Is the benefit principally immediate content related to the game or cultivation of contacts among other media member and people in the league? – JP

Gosh, my wife didn’t grill me this hard about how I am paying for the Super Bowl!

But seriously, this is a legit question which I began asking myself weeks ago, when I chose to apply for credentials. Here are my conclusions:

• Too Deep Zone readers will enjoy on-site Super Bowl coverage more than you would enjoy me spouting stats and stuff from the home office, which can end up sounding lifeless and disposable.

• Live coverage can attract a few new subscribers.

• Cultivation of contacts and reconnecting with old contacts is indeed a factor.

• Some content will probably be amortized into the offseason. (There are usually experts available for interviews, as well as random Pro Bowlers making the rounds for Dial-a-Mattress or whatever.)

• Travel expenses are tax write-offs!

And finally,

• My ego needed the jolt. The Messenger went out of business the week before the Super Bowl last year. I had to cancel the trip, and the NFL then revoked my credential. It sucked. It hurt. Getting back was important to me.

I’m still not sure what the Super Bowl week coverage at the Too Deep Zone will look like, but I hope to give readers a sense of being in New Orleans, waist-deep in various flavors of mayhem. The tagline for the site, after all, is “NFL coverage for poets, drunkards and dreamers.” New Orleans is home base for all three.

How does this credentialing thing work? If I started a Substack talking about football and got a certain number of subscriptions, would I also get credentialed? Or would I need to have my name in the game from previous things like you did? – Josh R.

I regret to inform you that an unknown content creator from an unknown outlet will NOT get Super Bowl credentials.

I have been in an NFL database since 2011, so I “check out,” though I was not granted a game pass. If ESPN or The Athletic want some newcomer credentialed, the outlet’s clout gets the unknown individual in. The New York Times was the first outlet to credential me, which certainly helped me overcome my lowly status and goofball reputation all those years ago. Too Deep Zone’s footprint is large enough to reassure the league that they are credentialing a going media concern, not a vanity project by a dude with a hankering for jambalaya.

There are layers upon layers to this. Individual teams have different policies for practices, press conferences and games. The Combine is sometimes harder to get into than Super Bowl week due to space constraints. There are also background checks and stuff.

Access is a major barrier when covering the NFL. So to add one more bullet point to the last answer:

• I don’t want to risk falling off the NFL’s media lists, which would limit my ability to do ANY traditional reporting.

What was your favorite part about teaching? There had to have been good things right? – Josh R.

I loved teaching. I loved the kids, the routine, the subject matter (trigonometry, especially), the feeling of connectedness to the community. I liked going to sporting events, plays and concerts. I loved the feeling of providing something to the students, even if it wasn’t useful math knowledge: my presence as a role model, acceptance, empathy, etc.

I only left because The New York Times kept offering bigger and bigger carrots. But that’s a story for another time.