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Official 2016 Punt and Kick Returner Thread (1 Viewer)

Captain Cranks

Captain Cranks

Footballguy
I hope Greg doesn't mind, but I wanted to get this kicked off ASAP (pun intended, heyuck heyuck).  Here are lists of each team's punt returners and kick-off returners per Ourlads (Updated from site on 9/4).  


 


Punt Returner


Kick Returner


Buffalo


Bush, Reggie


Bush, Reggie


Miami


Landry, Jarvis 14/2


Landry, Jarvis


New England


Edelman, Julian


Slater, Matthew 


New York


Marshall, Jalin


Marshall, Jalin


 


 


 


Baltimore


Webb, Ladarius


Young, Tavon


Cleveland


Coleman, Corey


Mostert, Raheem


Cincinnati


Jones, Adam


Jones, Adam


Pittsburgh


Brown, Antonio 10/6


Wheaton, Markus 13/3


 


 


 


Houston


Ervin, Tyler


Ervin, Tyler


Indianapolis


Bray, Quan CF15


Bray, Quan CF15


Jacksonville


Greene, Rashad


Grant, Corey


Tennessee


Douglas, Harry


Tre McBride


 


 


 


Denver


Norwood, Jordan


Norwood, Jordan


Kansas City


Hill, Tyreek


Davis, Knile 13/3


Oakland


Carrie, Travis 14/7


Jones, Taiwan 11/4


San Diego


Benjamin, Travis


Burse, Isaiah


 


 


 


Dallas


Whitehead, Lucky CF15


Whitehead, Lucky CF15


New York


Harris, Dwayne U/Dal


Harris, Dwayne U/Dal


Philadelphia


SPROLES, DARREN T/NO


Huff, Josh 14/3


Washington


Crowder, Jamison 15/4


Ross, Rashad SF14


 


 


 


Chicago


Thompson, Deonte


Thompson, Deonte


Detroit


Tate, Golden U/Sea


Abdullah, Ameer 15/2


Green Bay


Hyde, Micah 13/5


Hyde, Micah


Minnesota


Sherels, Marcus CF10


Patterson, Cordarrelle 13/1


 


 


 


Atlanta


WEEMS, ERIC SF14


Coleman, Tevin


Carolina


GINN, TED CC/Arz


Ginn, Ted


New Orleans


Murphy, Marcus


Murphy, Marcus


Tampa Bay


Humphries, Adam CF15


????


 


 


 


Arizona


Nelson, JJ


Nelson, JJ


STL



Austin, Tavon


Cunningham, Benny CF13


San Francisco


????


????


Seattle


Lockett, Tyler 15/3


Lockett, Tyler 15/3


 
Last edited by a moderator:
Obvs not official yet, but sounding like Jakeem Grant is gonna take over PR duties in Miami and get Landry off the field. Maybe even a more expansive return role in the future, as he was a KR in college. PR is new to him.

 
KC punt returner should be either De'Anthony Thomas or Tyreek Hill. Hammond is in the mix, but backed up Thomas last year and did not look good when forced into action. Knile Davis is potentially on the roster bubble.

 
Hey guys, just a heads up, but Greg got a big promotion in his "real" job this year, and he's had to step back from a lot of his FBGs duties as a result. I'm handling punt and kickoff returner projections this year in his stead; they can be seen in full here: http://subscribers.footballguys.com/apps/return-projections.php

(The currently-displayed projections were submitted the 16th; I just submitted another update which should populate through sometime tomorrow.)

I've found the Ourlads depth charts to be pretty hit-or-miss when it comes to returners. Sometimes there are errors, and sometimes they're copying the team depth chart correctly, but the team is just playing games. Arizona is a good example of this, IMO-- they listed J.J. Nelson as their top punt and kickoff returner last week despite Nelson having no kickoff return experience, and now they've got Ellington listed as their top punt and kickoff returner this week despite Ellington having no punt experience. I'm kind of splitting the baby and having Nelson/Ellington each projected at a third of Arizona's punt returns, (with Peterson getting the other third, because you know they're going to be using him still on high-leverage opportunities), and then I've got Ellington with 50% of the kickoff returns and a smattering of characters soaking up the rest. But that's mostly just me making stuff up. I've been playing in return leagues for nearly a decade and a half now, so I like to think I've developed a bit of a gut sense for what's just puffery, (undrafted rookie free agent X has a real shot at being the team's return specialist! Andre Ellington is going to return punts!). But we all know how easy it is for our gut to lead us astray.

There are plenty of other messy situations like that, and they're probably going to remain pretty messy until we start seeing teams trim down to 53. A lot of undrafted rookie pretenders are going to be out of the running in short order.

If y'all have any questions about specific projections, let me know. I'll keep an eye on this thread and try to post any major updates to my projections as I make them. You can also hit me on Twitter (@AdamHarstad) or email (Harstad@Footballguys.com) with any questions. And as we start approaching the massive bloodbath at the end of every NFL roster, please post any relevant cuts you wind up seeing. (I've already heard Eric Weems might be on his way out in Atlanta, which would be another big surprise after the team already cut Hester this offseason.)

 
howatzer said:
I think CB Cyrus Jones is going to be the primary punt returner for the Pats. 
Click to expand...
I think the Pats would like for him to be, but I'm still a little skeptical about how big of a share of the market he's really going to get. The exciting young guy is great in theory, but Amendola is a proven commodity, and boring / proven commodities have a long history of winning out over the exciting, risky, unproven young guns. (See: Brandon Tate, Marcus Sherels.)

Jones has been making some fielding errors in practice, from what I read, which isn't going to help his cause. And it also doesn't help that Julian Edelman has the 3rd-highest punt return average since the merger, behind Hester and Upchurch; he's too busy on offense to handle punts full-time, but like Patrick Peterson, he's probably going to be lining up deep whenever there's anything particularly high-leverage.

 
20 hours ago
The Arizona Cardinals released their depth chart for their third preseason game. Other than getting back injured players, there wasn’t any real movement at significant positions. There were two notable changes made on special teams, though

Andre Ellington is now the lead guy at both kick returns and punt returns.
Click to expand...
;)
 
For my league our defensive scoring is mostly due to touchdowns so I like to look for teams with good return teams.  Is there much consistency from year to year for teams to score return touchdowns?  A guy like Hester obviously makes a difference but is there any other consistency?  Does a guy like sproles still have the ability?

 
tangfoot said:
As long as this doesn't affect your dynasty rankings, I'm all for it. While I'm at it, where are your dynasty rankings?
Click to expand...
A good question that deserves a long answer. There's a TL;DR at the end for those impatient types. :)

Last year I switched from straight rankings to my dynasty value charts, which offer a lot more nuance in terms of giving the relative value differences between players, (as well as serving as a functional trade calculator). But the player values were based on just one year's worth of data (2014), so before putting them back up for 2016, I wanted to at least add 2015 into the mix, and possibly try to dig through old leagues to find values from 2013. (As a concrete example, I think 2014 might have been an unusual season at QB, and they might be overrated in my formula as a result.)

Typically I'd be doing that sort of research in the March-June months, which is prime Dynasty Activity period, but unfortunately this offseason was kind of a crazy one for me in my personal life, and my available time during those months was essentially zero. Then July/August are always devoted to redraft stuff, since most drafts are in the rear-view mirror and most redraft drafts are still to come.

Typically labor day weekend is the last big push for redraft draft prep, so that's going to dominate my life for one more week and then we're pretty much past the hump and I can turn my attention back to long-term projects. That'll give me a week or two to finish up the necessary research, lock down any improvements I can build into my formulas, and get my dynasty value charts back online for week 1.

Once the season hits I'm planning on doing the same weekly columns as last year, including the weekly value charts, though there might be some rebranding going on. I've been writing Dynasty, in Theory and Dynasty, in Practice for the past two years, but half the time my "in Practice" column is covering theory, or my "in Theory" column is touching on practice, or else I'm feeling unnecessarily constrained as a writer trying to keep everything in its respective bucket and stuff gets cut that might otherwise be useful. And half the time what I'm writing is really just general strategy that's applicable to all fantasy leagues, whether redraft, dynasty, or whatever. (As a "for instance", see this piece: http://subscribers.footballguys.com/apps/article.php?article=HarstadDiP28.)

As a result, like I said, I'm thinking I'm going to be doing a rebranding and changing the way I sort my articles. At the moment, I think I'm going to rename my two columns to "Dynasty, in Theory" and "Fantasy, in Theory", with the former containing all of my dynasty-specific thoughts, and the latter containing my general thoughts that apply to all leagues. For dynasty fans who fear this amounts to a reduction in content: I promise you, I'm writing the exact same stuff that I've always written, I'm just changing how it's branded in hopes that the stuff that is applicable to a broader audience can actually reach a broader audience. Dynasty types are usually openminded about reading content that's labeled as for redraft, but redraft-only types are typically snobs who skip right past anything written ostensibly for dynasty.

For those of you who like my work, please take a *huge* thanks for your support, and know that I'm going to continue trying to give you everything you always liked from me. Again, this is not a reduction in my dynasty content, this is just me trying to expand my audience without changing who I am or what I'm doing by simply re-labeling stuff that I was already writing anyway. Hopefully you all don't begrudge me that. :)

So, to recap, (because it wouldn't be an SSoG post without a tl;dr at the end):

1) The reduction in content to this point of the offseason has absolutely nothing to do with any additional duties I've taken on and everything to do with a bunch of personal-life stuff, some good and some bad, which has eaten away most of my offseason availability for research and the like.

2) From this point forward, you can expect exactly the same stuff you got from me last year, (though some of it will be under a different name), with the returner projections and my new podcast as additional pieces that sit on top of that.

3) Oh yeah, my new podcast. It's called Fantasy Football, in Theory, it's available on Stitcher and iTunes, or you can find it on the web right here. It's a 1-person, non-current-events-based show that's sort of a long-form look at the same sorts of things I'm writing about in my weekly columns. Episodes are sporadic at the moment because, as a one-man operation, they take forever to make and I don't want them impacting or delaying my existing commitments, but I'm hoping with experience, (and once past the crazy season), I can get them coming out weekly. I'm really excited about it, if for no other reason than because it just gives me another medium to do the stuff that I already love doing and another potential audience to reach out to. But again, it's an additional thing that will not come at the expense of my previous commitments.

 
dino259 said:
For my league our defensive scoring is mostly due to touchdowns so I like to look for teams with good return teams.  Is there much consistency from year to year for teams to score return touchdowns?  A guy like Hester obviously makes a difference but is there any other consistency?  Does a guy like sproles still have the ability?
Click to expand...
I'm never going to say there's nothing, but there's nothing consistent and predictable that I've found. Returns are notoriously a short-peak position, (with someone like Devin Hester being notable precisely because of how big of an outlier he is), and the year-to-year correlations are really weak. Return touchdowns are even worse, since they're binary, stochastic, and therefore highly susceptible to random noise.

I've currently got the league as a whole projected for 25,974 kickoff return yards and 6.5 kickoff return touchdowns, both of which are very close to the NFL averages over the last several years. But in terms of breaking that down by player, all players are projected with the same odds per individual return. The guys with the most projected touchdowns, then, are simply the guys with the most projected returns. Given how messy the base data is, (and my own philosophical tendency towards conservatism in projections), I'm not confident enough in my ability to add value by massaging things from there.

I mean, even Devin Hester failed to score a kickoff return touchdown in seven out of his ten seasons, including in two years where he led the NFL in kickoff return attempts. (The punt return data was different, but then again, there's a reason I believe Devin Hester is the greatest punt returner of all time.) If the league as a whole is probably only going to give us 6 or 7 kickoff return touchdowns, (it was either 6 or 7 in each of the last three seasons), how confident can we be that any one team will be responsible for one or even-- God forbid-- two of them?

 
Adam Harstad said:
Hey guys, just a heads up, but Greg got a big promotion in his "real" job this year, and he's had to step back from a lot of his FBGs duties as a result. I'm handling punt and kickoff returner projections this year in his stead; they can be seen in full here: http://subscribers.footballguys.com/apps/return-projections.php

(The currently-displayed projections were submitted the 16th; I just submitted another update which should populate through sometime tomorrow.)

I've found the Ourlads depth charts to be pretty hit-or-miss when it comes to returners. Sometimes there are errors, and sometimes they're copying the team depth chart correctly, but the team is just playing games. Arizona is a good example of this, IMO-- they listed J.J. Nelson as their top punt and kickoff returner last week despite Nelson having no kickoff return experience, and now they've got Ellington listed as their top punt and kickoff returner this week despite Ellington having no punt experience. I'm kind of splitting the baby and having Nelson/Ellington each projected at a third of Arizona's punt returns, (with Peterson getting the other third, because you know they're going to be using him still on high-leverage opportunities), and then I've got Ellington with 50% of the kickoff returns and a smattering of characters soaking up the rest. But that's mostly just me making stuff up. I've been playing in return leagues for nearly a decade and a half now, so I like to think I've developed a bit of a gut sense for what's just puffery, (undrafted rookie free agent X has a real shot at being the team's return specialist! Andre Ellington is going to return punts!). But we all know how easy it is for our gut to lead us astray.

There are plenty of other messy situations like that, and they're probably going to remain pretty messy until we start seeing teams trim down to 53. A lot of undrafted rookie pretenders are going to be out of the running in short order.

If y'all have any questions about specific projections, let me know. I'll keep an eye on this thread and try to post any major updates to my projections as I make them. You can also hit me on Twitter (@AdamHarstad) or email (Harstad@Footballguys.com) with any questions. And as we start approaching the massive bloodbath at the end of every NFL roster, please post any relevant cuts you wind up seeing. (I've already heard Eric Weems might be on his way out in Atlanta, which would be another big surprise after the team already cut Hester this offseason.)
Click to expand...
I've enjoyed doing the returner content the last few years but we're in great hands with Adam taking over here. I moved into our Big Data group at work, which is a great area to break into but it is changing so fast it has had a steep learning curve. Didn't feel I could commit the time here at the level you guys deserve. I'm actually taking the season off from FF entirely for the first time in 17 years, though I'll still be about to talk football.

Definitely agree about being cautious of preseason NFL depth charts. My favorite quote there was Chip Kelly last year said the Eagle's preseason depth chart was filled out by a PR guy, not a coach, because it was meaningless, just something the NFL requires them to produce.

They aren't totally worthless, but not something you can wholly depend on either.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
This is from the FBG email #125: (obviously, has an effect on Jarvis Landry's KR and PR prospects for this year)

8. MIA - WR Jakeem Grant on track to be returner

Source: The Miami Herald - Barry Jackson

Miami Dolphins WR Jakeem Grant appears to be close to winning the kick and punt returner jobs. He is averaging 25.5 yards per kick return and 12.2 yards per punt return during the preseason. It is not known if he will be used in the offense during the regular season.

[ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ FOOTBALLGUYS VIEW ] ] ] ] ] ] ] ] ] ]

Grant might have been the quickest player in college football when he played at Texas Tech. He's small (5'6" 165 pounds) but is electric with the ball in his hands.

 
GregR said:
I've enjoyed doing the returner content the last few years but we're in great hands with Adam taking over here. I moved into our Big Data group at work, which is a great area to break into but it is changing so fast it has had a steep learning curve. Didn't feel I could commit the time here at the level you guys deserve. I'm actually taking the season off from FF entirely for the first time in 17 years, though I'll still be about to talk football.

Definitely agree about being cautious of preseason NFL depth charts. My favorite quote there was Chip Kelly last year said the Eagle's preseason depth chart was filled out by a PR guy, not a coach, because it was meaningless, just something the NFL requires them to produce.

They aren't totally worthless, but not something you can wholly depend on either.
Click to expand...
Good for you Greg...good luck with your new position!

 
Two Bills depth charts I have seen show Reggie Bush as both Punt Returner and Kickoff Returner. Anyone seen any updates/articles saying if he is really going to start the season doing both?

Any news on CJ Spiller returning kicks or are the Saints going with Murphy for punt and kick returns?

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Tampa Bay KR = Rookie S Ryan Smith.

When asked if he had anyone particular in mind who would handle the kick return responsibilities, (Head Coach) Koetter showed no hesitation before mentioning Ryan Smith, Tampa’s fourth round pick in the 2016 NFL draft.

He also has the line on the future FS job as Chris Conte has only 1 year remaining on his contract.

 
BTW, Texans wk 1 had Ervin on kickoffs but Braxton Miller and Will Fuller were the two deepest blockers. Nothing to rely on, but could get an occasional bonus for Fuller from it.

 
Captain Cranks said:
I hope Greg doesn't mind, but I wanted to get this kicked off ASAP (pun intended, heyuck heyuck).  Here are lists of each team's punt returners and kick-off returners per Ourlads (Updated from site on 9/4).  


 


Punt Returner


Kick Returner


 


 


 


Detroit


Tate, Golden U/Sea


Abdullah, Ameer 15/2


 


 


 
Click to expand...
Andre Roberts holds both these jobs.

 
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