Arizona Cardinals Take DVOA Lead

I wonder if the slow pace GB plays at is due to how careful Rodgers is with the ball. GB generally wins the turnover battle since you assume the only way GB will turn it over is due to a random fumble. The fewer possessions there are in a game, the more impactful being +1 or +2 in possessions becomes. (Or could be an alternative reason such as the fewer plays run in a game the fewer opportunities for injuries which could lead to improved health for the playoffs).

The horrendous special teams. They need more said about them.

Coaching Coaching Coaching!
The self imposed coaching salary cap I think does a lot to explain the currently bad special teams. I don't know how long that has been in place but I suspect for awhile. And special teams, outside a few windows, have been an issue even during the Favre era. Though the real continued systemic issues started in 2005 when Thompson took over.

When you skimp on the coaching you give up margins, and since it was revealed GB won't pay coaches over their self created cap that could explain why they keep getting subpar coaches. That seems doubly stupid since it's one of the few areas you can you actually "throw money at the problem" without nearly the same considerations as other areas. While special teams may only be 1/7 of the game (by DVOA standards) it's also generally played by the bottom of the roster, so the most marginal players who seem like they could get the most extra value from good coaching. So double stupid (it can have a magnified impact and you don't have to reduce somewhere else to pay for it).

With GB the ST errors are coaching errors for the most part. Sure some is lack of talent but a lot of it feels like coaching. Blockers not in position. Returners not given clear instructions on when to attempt returns and when not to. Too many or not enough players on the field. Players not knowing where to position themselves if the team isn't going to return a punt. Stupid penalties. Heck you can coach spatial awareness at least to a basic level and Green Bay does not seem to even get to that level, players often look lost out there. Now you are starting a cycle where the bottom of the roster is perpetually getting the worst coaching. I think that plays into the psychology of when they get a shot at their regular position too. Add to it that some of the fundamentals a good ST coach can instill will transfer to playing a regular position as well. But these guys also know they aren't good at special teams and I can see that affecting them in other ways too and might be part of the issue with drop off to back-ups, a small part but I can see it being there.

This last game we also got a nice illustration of the value of a long snapper. Borojquez is not blameless as the holder and Crosby is not blameless either. But there is an expectation that an NFL long snapper will do certain things. Of course long snapper is also a position that has very little marginal value, the best long snapper might not give you any extra value over the worst if the worst hits that skill floor. It may have a high floor but the ceiling feels pretty low. You have to be sufficiently good to put the ball where it needs to be with the right orientation every time. The consistency being the most important aspect. If the holder always has to rotate a quarter turn that can be dealt with, it's not ideal but if you are consistent it's good enough. So that also means it's a position that is completely not worth a draft pick (which the front office wasted). You sift through FA and practice squads and you find that base level. If you have decent coaches, which they don't, you can find the player to do the job.

Actually with Crosby on the whole season with the FG misses I'm actually prepared to give Crosby the smallest share of the blame, which is a bit nuts. The blocking was bad up to and through the Cincy game. The long snapper was awful against KC. Crosby is not blameless as mentioned but if you are parceling it out, he's actually probably getting the lowest percentage.

Specialist (Kickers, punters, returners)
So that leads into the specialists tend to be fine. They tend to be good enough that they can get you league average performances. Though of course that is all brought down because the blocking and coverage units are not going to be good, so even the good areas are likely going to cost you points over the season. But during the Thompson+ era (i.e. 2005 till now) GB has averaged -1.7% DVOA. That is from -1.1 FG/XP, -3.4 Kickoff, -3.3 Kickoff Retrun, -1.1 Punt, and 0.9 punt return (most of that honestly because of Woodson, Cobb, and Hyde). So in the areas where one player can really dominate the stat (FG, punt, punt return) they have been poor but not brutally bad most of the time. The 2 areas where the rest of the team has a larger impact (Kickoff which the coverage unit impacts heavily and kickoff returns which need better blocking than punt returns) they are just always bad.

The impact of special teams
This year the Packers currently lead the league in punt value with 7.4 points over average (#2 is 6.2 so it's a solid lead). They are just behind JAX -8.6 to -8.8 points under average on FG/XP. Again much of that is not actually on Crosby.  They do much "better" on Kickoffs and kickoff returns with only 3 teams being worse (though it's a different 3 teams for each) with their -3.7 and -2.7 points added. Then they again take a healthy lead in worst punt returns at -5.9 points added under average compared to the 2nd worst at only -3.6.  They are AWFUL this year.

Borojquez and some booming punts and solid pins in the 20 is the only reason the overall unit isn't dead last by a mile instead of being 3rd worst at -5.1% DVOA vs the worst, LAC, at -5.6%. LAC has no unit giving positive value but their negative values aren't nearly as bad. ATL who is second worst gets positive value from FG/XP and Punt return so 2 units. They are just by the far the worst in the league at kickoffs so again it's not as systemic. GB has one specialist, because the coverage unit is not great it really is just Borojquez, that keeps them from likely being a "worst ST of all times" featurette in these weekly DVOA articles.

With just league average special teams GB, even with the NO game, the Jordan Love experience game, and the let's play football without wide receivers in the 2020s game, would jump from 3.4 to 8.5% DVOA. From 15th to just out of 12th. A few ordinal ranks for something that gets 1/7th the weight. They matter they can turns wins to losses.

That KC game is 7-6 KC early in the 2nd quarter if the long snapper just gets half a rotation more or less on the snaps, or Borojquez spins the ball, or Crosby can deal with the laces being completely in the wrong spot. That very well could have changed play calling on both sides and we may have seen 4th quarter Jordan Love, who looked like an OK back-up by that point, earlier and yes I could have seen that flipping the W/L. That doesn't even touch on the mistake on the return that gave KC 3 more points (should have been 7 but the D really did play well). 2 snaps and 1 poorly coached player on a punt return was a 9 point swing in a 13 - 7 game. A 13 - 10 GB win is ugly but changes a lot of things.

How systemic is it?
I don't have easy access to the full data to normalize and always provide context, but the Thompson+ era (05 onward) the high water mark for special teams DVOA is 2007 with 3.0%. In the Rodgers era (08 onward) it's 1.8% in 2011. They have NEVER had back to back positive seasons. In fact only 5 of the 17 seasons have had a positive DVOA. The average DVOA for those 17 seasons is -1.7%. The low water mark is -7.5% in 2009. So yeah fans get really happy when they get close to 0. That's a great year in GB for ST. I mean 3.0% (2007), 1.8% (2011), 1.3% (2017), 0.4% (2015), and 0.1% (2019) are the years to celebrate! 2007 and 2011 we finished 8th in ST DVOA top 10 baby! We were 14th in 2017 top half! That's it. 3 seasons in the past 17 have been in the top half of the league. If it wasn't for that 14th in 2017 we could be using the word decade when measuring how long it's been since a top half of the league finish.

But that isn't all. You have 5 aspects that DVOA feels are mostly in control of the team, and 2 (hidden and weather) that aren't. Lets dig a bit more into those 5. FG/XP (mostly your placekicker), Kickoff return (mostly a returner heavily dependent on blocking), Punting (mostly your punter with some from coverage teams), and punt returns (a returner less dependent on blocking). I'm going to set -10 points over the season as a complete disaster and +10 as exceptional. I don't have the average ranges for the league but having multiple teams over or under 10 in a season in a category is somewhat common. You do see a + or - 20 every now and then.

• FG/XP - 7+ and 10- seasons. Average: -1.1. High: 8.8 (2020). Low: -11.8 (2012). 1 disaster (2012, 2021 on it's way to #2). 0 exceptional
• Kickoff - 4+ and 13- seasons. Average: -3.4. High: 8.4 (2007). Low: -12.3 (2013). 1 disaster (2013). 0 exceptional
• K Ret - 3+ and 14- seasons. Average: -3.3. High: 5.4 (2015). Low: -13.0 (2006). 2 disaster (2005, 2006). 0 exceptional
• Punt - 9+ and 8- seasons. Average: -1.1. High 9.7 (2012). Low: -17.4 (2009). 2 disaster (2009, 2020). 0 exceptional
• P Ret - 9+ and 8- seasons. Average: 0.9. High 12.3 (2007). Low: -9.2 (2018). 0 disaster. 2 exceptional (2007, 2014)

So as mentioned the specialists tend to be OK (not good, but OK). Most seasons the punter adds at least a little value, except when he doesn't and when he doesn't he is usually replaced. I think having a pretty good offense helps this out too since they aren't punting as much and they aren't punting in harder to punt in areas of the field as much.

2 of the negative FG/XP seasons were 05 and 06 the last 2 years of Longwell. So Crosby is 7+ and 8- (which includes this year). 4 of those - years are in his first 6 seasons and were in part because of how McCarthy used him. McCarthy has never seen a FG distance or conditions he didn't like and would trot Crosby out in situations where he had like a 10% chance to make the kick. There is also of course the 2012 disaster year you can google for analysis of that if you like. But after that, especially if you take away this year as previously discussed, he's been mostly fine. He's not great but his negative years since then (excluding this year) weren't too bad and most of the misses were on longer attempts. But there have always been worries about the rest of the unit. Earlier this year the leaky protect that lead to near blocks and then actual blocks at Cincy, is not something that is unique to this season. Bad snaps and poor holds are not unique to this season either.

The punt returns surprised me at first with more + seasons than - seasons, but then I remembered some of this data has Woodson and Cobb returning punts. Micah Hyde had a few decent years in there too. In fact if I wanted to dig I would bet most of the good seasons there was a lot of value coming from one player making up for the systemic issues. Without pro bowl level talent as the returner returns were a drag and even with it they were a - some years. You shouldn't need a player who has enough talent to make the pro bowl as a receiver or defensive back in order to have positive punt return value. But that was where it came from, they would make a tackler or 5 miss and get a good return despite the rest of the team not because of.

The aspects that are more heavily interdependent, kickoff coverage and kickoff return they are never great almost always a drag on the team.

There are more ways to quantify the badness. There are 6 combinations of how many aspects provide positive value and how many provide negative. 11 times in the last 17 years 3 or more have been negative and 6 times 3 or more have been positive. Since they have had only 5 positive DVOA's it's 2013 where they were -0.3% DVOA and had positive value in all but kickoff and kickoff return that gives you that 1 extra. Here is that aggregate breakdown. (units with + value - unites with - value)

• 0-5: 2
• 1-4: 6
• 2-3: 3
• 3-2: 4
• 4-1: 2
• 5-0: 0

Even in their best years some aspect of special teams is dragging them down. Most commonly only 1 aspect is a positive.

Now I only have the GB data going back to 92 for this, that is the start of the Favre era so I can't give the best context. But in the 13 years from 1992 - 2004 they had 7 aspects hit the exceptional level, so +10 points or more actually broke +20 twice, that is compared to 2 in the 17 years since. They had 5 (2 punt return, 1 punt, and 2 kickoff) units hit the disaster level (vs 6 since). Oh and those 7 exceptional they had at least 1 in every area, with 3 of them being kickoff return so it wasn't just because of Desmond Howard doing crazy punt and kickoff returns. They were spread out across units and time. Also the +/- splits by units show the same thing they never had any 0-5, 1-4, or 5-0 splits. It was 2-3 (6), 3-2 (4), 4-1 (3). So even when things were bad at least 2 units were still providing positive value and they had as many 3-2 and 4-1 splits in the 13 years as the following 17 produced. It's pretty clear how much worse things got from 2005 onward.

Now weather does play a part. They average -2.8 weather points a season and it's never been positive. It doesn't really matter where you make the breaks on that either the average is always close to -2.8. That makes sense, they play home games in Green Bay and road games in the NFC north. They are going to have more bad weather games than the average NFL team. (Note they are +1.2 so far this year but I expect that's going to drop as the season progresses). So yes that is going to pull the DVOA down all the time but it's not a massive factor and it didn't stop them from having 8 positive DVOA seasons and only 5 negative pre-Thompson. Actually since the team should know this it's even more reason to invest a little extra on special teams to make up for it.

Finally the D part of DVOA has almost no effect. VOA follows the same trends. Some years defensive adjustments makes it a little worse some a little better, but the negative vs positive split doesn't change. Even in the marginal years where they are in that -1% to +1% DVOA range it's not because of opponent adjustments negative VOA means negative DVOA and positive means positive even if the magnitude is different.

Are hidden points really things out of the teams control?
 

HIDDEN represents the advantage teams have received from elements of special teams generally out of their control: opposing field goals, kickoff distance, and punt distance
 

In the Thompson+ era (the last 17 years) GB has has had positive hidden points 4 times 23.5% of the time. In the previous 13 years (going back to the start of the Favre era) they had positive hidden points 5 times, 38.4%. Things were better in general in the pre-Thompson era. But with hidden points being negative most of the time it does make me wonder if there is something that can be controlled by the team that isn't being captured.

It may be that teams like GB that have generally had a good to great offense during those times will have worse hidden points because of how opponents approach punts and field goals and kick offs.

Or I wonder if lack of pressure on the kicker from the special teams is part of why they are more likely to hit longer field goals or have longer punts. I get that you can't easily find that value, but with it being consistently bad for a team with consistently bad ST it doesn't feel like it's completely unaffected. Kickoff distance, yeah that one I can't really see how GB ST affects the other team (though offense/defense might) so that all being hidden/luck feels right.

So yeah that can almost always be counted on as something to pull DVOA down too for GB but again not sure it's completely unaffected by GB's poor ST quality.

Edit: If you don't like how DVOA rates Special teams this Forbes article covers the ineptitude using Rich Gosselins annual ratings. Probably a much quicker read than my post too...

I was hoping someone would write on that game, because the first 3 quarters were as complete and total a domination as I can remember seeing (well, since NO over GB anyway). I wonder if DEN lifting their foot off the gas near the end made it look like an "ordinary" bad loss rather than a catastrophe.

I also wonder what happened with Denver's DVOA? I can't access it, but they're rated more "mediocre" than "terrible" right now (with pass defense in fact slightly above average) - so maybe opponent adjustments don't hammer them the way they did some other upsets.