lee909

Damn phone making look some STD riddled pervert.

TheOak

Our Special teams are total crap... The Penalties give our opponents 10 yards and killing us.

Our Opponents are averaging 37.6 yards per Punt on us and that's 5th highest in the league.

They kick FGs and nothing else. There is zero discipline.

Beastmode

How many times did they punt? About 50. Think we're good. Clean up the penalties.

SaintsBro

I agree with Dude, I think Saints special teams "not being horrid" is cause for dancing broccoli and Who Dat emoticons right off the bat. Face it, we are stuck with McMahon unless somebody here would like to entertain the notion of having a head coach not named Sean Payton. No way McMahon is going anywhere, unless they lose the Super Bowl 70-0 with all the scoring being because the other team ran back ten kickoffs or punts for touchdowns.

It seems to be the intentional plan this year, that McMahon's special teams will brain fart and give the other team the ball on the 40 or 50, once or twice a game, and make Rob Ryan deal with it.

Arizona are one of the best special teams units out there in terms of returning punts and kicks. Prior to the game, some people here predicted that it would be exploited and would make the game close. It ultimately didn't do the Cardinals a lot of good.

We can "peen moan" all we want in these threads, but until it does actually make a difference in a game, it's the same raggedy sloppy special teams as we've always had when we were a playoff team. Nothing new here.

Barry from MS

Good teams exploit special teams blunders; AZ ain't a good team right now. Considering how much better we are than AZ, our Spec Teams idiocy kept the game tight going into halftime. If it's a playoff-caliber team, we're down a TD or 2 at half.

Wonder if you'll sing a different tune when field position or a return costs us an early exit from the playoffs? Hope not. We can only hope Ryan's D and Payton's O continues to clean up McMahon's habit of crapping the bed.

Jack Vegas

I have been pleasantly surprised by the kick and punt coverage, especially since Roby was such a big part of that unit and it always suffered without him. I'm not saying it's great, in fact I would say it's average and sloppy but honestly I was kind of expecting weekly disasters in this area.

Return team is terrible. It's disappointing that we have a guy like Darren Sproles as a returner and everything gets short-circuited because our blockers can't get out of their own way or stop themselves from tagging another guy in the back.

Field goals seem good. I think we generally underrate Hartley a lot. There are a ton of worse kickers in the league. Punting is good except when Morestead way outkicks his coverage, which seems to be the case often lately. But I'd rather have that problem than the opposite.

ScottF

I'm missing something... Hartley is 7-8, Morstead is all-world, we gave up 15 yards in PR, Sproles averaged 18 in punt returns...

one long KR return and the 2-3 obligatory penalties and the sky is falling?

Mardigras9

????

Rugby Saint II

I believe that McMahon needs to go and I've said so for years.

TheOak

FYI we have punted 11 times this season. That would be tied with the Colts @#1 for the lest amounts of punts in the league.

I didnt mention "our" punting because that is fine and our punt numbers are due to Morstead The Leg.

Returning other teams punts is where we are 29th in the league.
NFL Football Stats - NFL Team Opponent Net Yards per Successful Punt on TeamRankings.com

Sproles is averaging 7.3 yards per punt return (20th). And 23 yards per Kick Off Return (27th).
Returning Stat Leaders 2013,NFL Overall Punt & Kick Return Rankings

Special teams is all about field position. Sproles needs those guys to block.

Everyone is more than welcome to be happy with penalties and being at the bottom of the league in return yardage... I am not.