Since 2000, this is how the team has ranked in kick returning.

08' 32nd
07' 22nd
06' 31st
05' 32nd
04' Tied 14th
03' 5th
02' 25th
01' 30th
00' 3rd

Being nice, I will say that is 2.5 good years.

Wouldn't it be nice to consistently have a good return team so the O can start in better field position. It is time to quit the ST penalties on the returns, and to open some holes for the return guys.

I remember when Howard was returning, you would see the enzone angle and the holes were huge. Haven't seen anything like that since.

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Will Blackmon isn't built as a kick returner IMO. He is a great punt returner, but the two are totally different. Returning kicks requires you to find a hole and hit it. Blackmon tends to do a lot of cutting and going laterally. This is bad obviously because he is stopping forward momentum when he has 11 guys running full speed at him.

It always seems we have to start the ball at the 23 yard line. I would like to see Tramon Williams back there.

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Interesting. I looked up the stats myself and found this tidbit of information.

Bottom 5 teams in average yards per kick return:

Green Bay
Baltimore
Pittsburgh
Miami
Indianapolis

The 5 worst teams in terms of average kick return yardage have combined for 47 wins. 4 of the 5 could be playoff teams.

Conclusion: Who gives a shit about kick return yardage? It's clearly not much of a factor in determining overall success.

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Very interesting stat.

However, according to McCarthy winning ST battles and having favourable field position are important factors to him. KRs do factor into that, along with various other things.

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Which begs the question: Is McCarthy focused on the wrong things? My initial analysis of focusing on the bottom 5 teams this year, admittedly falls short due to small sample size, but a quick once over of the top and bottom 5 teams of the past 5 years in kick return average doesn't seem to show much correlation between the statistic and wins.

This could be one of those instances of popular opinion being dead wrong - similar to many baseball managers still believing stealing bases or playing "small ball" are effective offensive strategies even though they've been shown time and time again not to be so.

Anyone care to look further into this?

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I think blackmon is ok, he did have a huge TD return get called back by a penalty. I also remember Jordy having a couple 30+ (I think) returns get called back.

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Blackmon gets a good kick-return from time to time. He's not very consistent though, more of a high risk high reward returner. And indeed, that does usually work better on punt-returns, especially since you don't expect him to take it back very far.

Maybe Jordy can eventually be our good KR, the kid has the potential to give us some good field position. We'll see how they solve this problem in the off-season.

Giving up a spot on the roster for someone who can do little more than Kick-returning though, is pretty hard. I mean, even the Lions got rid of Drummond and he still seemed to be pretty good, he just couldn't catch a ball to save his life.

There may not be a direct correlation between good Kick of returns and wins. That doesn't mean it doesn't matter. And I would much rather be on the top end of the scale than the bottom end.

Returns do play a big part of the field position game. Team with better field position usually win and those with worse usually lose.

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Hey, mattresell, I would appreciate if you'd contribute a statistical analysis of this topic to the Statistical Playground. One interesting thing to look at might be what was the Packers' record vs. their return-game ranking in the past 8 seasons?

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Getting anywhere passed the thirty is a success on Kickoff return in my eyes.