Quote:
Originally Posted by KChiefs1
The Texas punter was the MVP of that bowl game. He’s a helluva punter.
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I agree with him on one note, occasionally a great punter can affect a game in a big enough way that it's significant in the team winning. However, the data clearly shows it doesn't over the course of a season and it doesn't over the course of several seasons.
The point of it all, to me, is to ask yourself whether or not it's actually worth spending high dollars on a "great" punter when, statistically, it really doesn't make much of a (if any) difference?
If you can spend low draft capital, or even sign a punter as an UDFA, and he will perform in line with NFL standards at the position, there isn't a clear statistic that I've found that correlates it being any worse than the best in the game over the long-haul.
One thing I'm looking into right now is the differences between punters that are 1 standard deviation below the mean in terms of IN 20 % and those that are 1 standard deviation above the mean. This should give me a better idea of impact of a bad punter versus great punter.