New Orleans Saints top 25 countdown: Thomas Morstead, No. 18
 

Assinine. Its the least important position on any team in any sport.

This guy is a moron.

You have to lover our Punter/Kicker. He's a great weapon. :bng:

Gimme a stud LB over a stud Punter anyday.

In fact, if you had to pick one position to have a bad player at, IT WOULD BE THE PUNTER.

Name a less important position on a football team.

The best punter in the entire NFL is Andy Lee. How come no one mentioned him going into our match-up last year? Was he the reason we lost? Did he even have an affect on the game at all? He wouldn't even be in the top 20 reasons we lost and he's hands down the best punter in the game today.

The only reason anyone even mentions punters is when their team burns a valuable draft pick on one.

If they are so valuable, hoe come only 1 or 2 get drafted every year? And how come its always in the 5th 6th or 7th round?

If they were such an awesome weapon there would at least be some drafted in the 1st 2nd or 3rd rounds.

I lose all respect for anyone's football knowledge the moment they even hint that a punter is more valuable than any other position on an NFL team.

So you don't think a punter that can regularly kick out of the endzone, forcing a team to go 80 yds for a TD has any value?

How about the guy who gave us an extra possession in the superbowl, I guess a stud LB could have done that too :rolleyes:

Thats not what I said.

We did give up a draft pick for him when we had just four picks(I think).
To Payton that means better field position. To me it's better field position. To Danno it's a wasted pick. I see your point Danno. But I also see Paytons point as well. That's the great thing about the BNG. We don't have to agree on everything.:cool:
Who Dat Baby!

In a defensive battle, a game of 3 and outs, I'd rather have the punter that's going to net 10 more yards than his opponent. Sometimes it's the difference in the two punters that moves the ball. In a high octane offense like the Saints have, it's probably not as noticeable, but I'd still rather have that in my favor than not.

I'd rather have a stud LB and a mediocre punter than the other way around. Same goes for every other position on both sides of the ball.

Fullback and Long-snapper are debatable though. But there's a reason they aren't drafted very often or very high either.

Andy Lee in San Francisco puts up Morestead-type numbers, and that gave our offense fits in the playoffs. Even with a miracle-worker like Drew at the wheel I don't like seeing him start inside the 20. It made an impact on that game.

I'd have to go with the five turnovers as having the real impact on that game.

Andy Lee had minimal affect on our ability to move the ball. San Fran's skullcrushing defense is the reason we struggled to move the ball, and coughed it up so frequently.

I'll take Donte Whitner, Aldon Smith, or Patrick Willis over any punter that ever played the game.

I guess you would want a stud LB over a stud Punter/Kickoff Specialist. You rarely see a punt of a kickoff change the game. Still, it is an important position since both punts and kickoffs do get returned.

And onside kicks in the Super Bowl never matter!

I could have kicked that onsides kick.

The call was the reason that worked, and of course Hank Basket letting it bounce off his head helped a lot too.

LOL! :rolleyes: c'mon man,

OK then, would you believe...

ANY NFL kicker could have kicked that onsides kick.

ANY retired NFL kicker could have kicked that onsides kick.

ANY College kicker could have kicked that onsides kick.

3/4 of the players on the team could have kicked that onsides kick.

Half the Saintsations could have kicked that onsides kick.

I'll give you that one, but yet I've seen numerous onsides kicks kicked out of bounds or too short and not make the ten yards:confused:...

not consistently

not consistently

not happening

not a snowballs chance in hell

LOL..this is funny. It is best to agree to disagree..Danno has very strong opinions when it comes to kickers/punters. Nothing you can say will change his mind.

I think More-stud is a huge weapon for us. Gonna side against Danno on this one.

OK, so name a less important position on an NFL team then.

Don't worry, no one else has either.:p

Kickers are a hell of a lot more important than punters.

Where did you hear I ever said differently?

On the field at any given time? Would have to say Morestead has a more important role than the at least half of the other ten players on any kickoff-punt team. They would have to rank as more expendable than him in that senario.

What position? CB? WR? SS? FS? LB? RB?

C'mon, give me a position. Its an easy question.

No, it would have to be one of the hole fillers (not long snapper though) in that scheme, the upback can compensate for a weakness there in most cases.

I could accept long snapper. Thats actually an answer to my question. Thank you for participating, you are the 1st to freaking answer the damn question, sort of. Many don't consider long snapper an actual position.

But again, no one uses early or multiple picks on long snappers either so my point still remains.

Long snapper is the default answer to the least important player on a football team, but still it can really bite you in the butt if one of those long snaps goes haywire at the wrong time, especially when close to own endzone - we've all probably seen safeties coming from those type of situations.

I've defended Morstead and the importance of punting overall before to you Danno, and I couldn't change your mind about it then, so I'm not even going to try it this time around.

But would you Danno rather always go for it on 4th down regardless of the situation than punt the ball away? I mean, I think I read some article about this very question some time a go, and it had some statistical calculations which kind of supported the notion of always going for it on 4th down, but I can't remember where I read the article or how convincing the calculations actually were.


Oh, and you are definitely under-appreciating the art of kicking an onside kick. The success rate is about between 20% and 30%, so if the guys who practice it constantly only successfully give it three times out of ten attempts - it can't be that easy for someone who hasn't practiced it at all. But definitely it matters a lot when the kick is tried, so you are correct about the SB onside kick, still I wouldn't say that anyone could've made that kick successfully.

http://www.advancednflstats.com/2009...ide-kicks.html

I believe Morestead learned the onsides kick two weeks before the
Superbowl. If I remember correctly.

But that same article points out the success rate is 60% when its unexpected.

And when a normally sure handed WR bounces it off his head instead of catching and falling on it, I'd asume the success rate skyrockets.

Yes, but the overall success rate is still there between 20% and 30%, some sources have it lower and some have it higher, but three times out of ten is pretty much the success rate overall.

And all the surprise in the world won't make a difference if the kicker isn't able to place the onside kick where he is supposed to, which is not a walk in the park.

Fin, he kicked it right to Basket, who bounced it off his friggin head. It was a surprise kick, in fact it may have been the biggest surprise on-sides kick in NFL history, and the success rate of surprise kicks is 60%.

Oh, and this is off-topic. We aren't debating whether or not he's a good punter or a KO specialist. He is a good punter, in fact I'd say he's a great punter. But he's still a punter and a punter is the least important position on the team.

To put him ahead of Devery Henderson, Cameron Jordan, Mark Ingram, Chris Ivory, Zack Strief, Sedrick Ellis and Patrick Robinson is beyond ridiculous.

That may be the dumbest thing I have ever read in my life.

I agree wholeheartedly with you that it's insane to rank him #18 from the whole Saints' roster, and I also agree with you on that he is a great punter. The fact that he is also in charge of the kick offs gives him additional value along with the fact that he has such a high number of touchbacks from those kick offs, but that doesn't equate to being #18.

I was speaking about onside kicks in general, not as much about the SB onside kick by him, so in that regard you are right, but I do think that you are undervaluing the difficulty of kicking a successful onside kick in general.