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[NFL] Why are players coming out of the endzone so much?

Discussion in 'Football: NFL, College, High School' started by justtxyank, Sep 11, 2012.

  1. justtxyank

    justtxyank Contributing Member

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    Am I crazy? It seems like players so far this season are coming out of the endzone on kickoffs a lot. Thew new rule was obviously meant to make it less likely a player would return a kickoff and it seemed like last year it had that effect. So far this year it seems like returners are coming out quite a bit and getting stuffed at the 15 or worse.

    What is going on? In the Ravens game the Bengals actually had a second player stay with the return man and he had to stop the returner on every kickoff after the first two I think so he wouldn't come out of the endzone. The first two he got killed before he got to the 20.
     
  2. pirc1

    pirc1 Contributing Member

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    Most of the kick off returners are not starts on the team, they want to show what they can do and possibly break into the starting lineups. To them the reward of breaking a big kick off return outweigh the risk of getting stuffed before reaching 20.
     
  3. ima_drummer2k

    ima_drummer2k Contributing Member

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    Human nature.

    No one wants to get all amped up to return a kick and then just take a knee and walk back to the sideline. The allure of taking one to the house and being all over ESPN that night is too tempting.
     
  4. Major

    Major Member

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    The risk/reward is still in favor of running out most kickoffs.

    Worst case is generally you get to the 15 - so your downside is losing 5 yards. Your upside is much higher - if you even get one kickoff to the 40 or so, you've more than come out ahead even if all the other kickoffs get stuffed at the 15.
     
  5. DonnyMost

    DonnyMost not wrong
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    I assume it is because, for most of these guys, the fear/probability of getting cut/not earning a big payday for doing nothing but taking a knee is greater than the fear/probability of getting tackled inside the 20 yard line.
     
  6. BigBenito

    BigBenito Member

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    Worst case is a turnover.
     
  7. RunninRaven

    RunninRaven Contributing Member
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    One thing that I came to realize is that it seems pretty easy to at least get to the 20 yard line, even if you start 8-9 yards deep in the end zone. Before the rule changes it seemed common for anything that wend 5 yards+ deep into the end zone would not get run out, and I think people just got in that habit even though it really didn't make sense. I expect the returns to continue at the clip they are going now.
     
  8. justtxyank

    justtxyank Contributing Member

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    Except they aren't getting to the 20 yard line. A lot of these guys are getting stuffed at the 15 or earlier.

    And when you are talking about starting on either the 20 or the 15 or worse, the 10, there is a huge difference in 5 yards.

    It's not really that coming out of the endzone is automatically a bad idea, but these guys are really bad at reading the kick coverage. The Bengals moved a player into the endzone with the returner to read the coverage for him lol. That's how ridiculous it was.
     
  9. Fyreball

    Fyreball Contributing Member

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    Yep, and he still ignored him, and ran one out only to get stuffed at the 6 yardline anyways lol. I have a feeling special teams coaches are going to be running a lot of kneeling drills this week across the league.
     

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