Because Rocca Is The New Gocong

Something's been nagging at me for about a week since I was asked about the prospects for improvement for David Akers and Sav Rocca this season.  How do you evaluate a guy like Rocca, when he has no history in the sport and no statistical track record to look at?

Then it hit me.  Rocca isn't the first Aussie to make this transition.  What if we looked at the other guys who have crossed the ocean to see if there's anything we can learn about their experiences.

Here's the history of Aussie punters:

Last year Graham became the fourth Aussie to punt in the NFL. The first was the little-remembered Colin Ridgway, who played for the Dallas Cowboys in 1965. Ridgway was a novelty who lasted just three games before being released. It would be three decades before another Australian punter got a shot. He was Darren Bennett, formerly of the Melbourne Football Club, who became an All-Pro and was named to the NFL's All-Decade Team for the 1990s. Bennett has played 11 years in the NFL, most recently with the Minnesota Vikings last season. Mat McBriar punted for the Brighton Grammar School in Australia before earning a scholarship to the University of Hawaii. He's entering his third season with the Cowboys.

Ridgway is a little too old to be much help here, so he's out.  And McBriar isn't a perfect parallel since he punted in college, but I ran his numbers anyway just to see if they told us anything interesting.  Turns out they do, but that's skipping ahead. 

So here's our starting point.  It's the average first-year punting stats of the three previous "modern" Aussies compared to our own Sav Rocca:

For the most part, Rocca's numbers are just a little worse than the other three guys.  The differences aren't huge, but they're there. 

But we already knew Rocca had a slightly below average 2007 season, so that doesn't tell us much.  What's more interesting is the next chart, comparing the rookie and second-year seasons of the other three punters (click for full size on this one):

 

Two things jump out at me about this chart.  First of all, these three guys didn't take massive steps forward in their second seasons.  Just in terms of pure distance, all three were a little better, but you're talking an improvement of less than a yard for everything but McBriar's net average.

The second issue here is that Bennett's experience was very different from the other two guys.  He actually went backwards in terms of most of the other non-core stats, while McBriar and Graham showed significant improvement in areas like pinning teams inside the 20 and cutting down on returns. 

What does this all tell us?  It suggests to me that we may be looking for too much from Sav for him to make any sort of major leap this season with his punting.  He should improve, but -- just based on these numbers -- it may not be dramatic.  (Like for example, instead of just pasting one would-be returner this season into the turf it might only go up to two, rather than four or or five.) 

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Now I bet the astute Cowboy haters out there (which pretty much describes my entire readership) are saying to themselves right now, "Wait a second, I hate the guy because he plays for Dallas, but didn't Mat McBriar make the Pro Bowl a couple years ago?  He must be pretty good."

That's exactly right.  But here's what's interesting about McBriar.  Check out his career stats.

Yep, exactly.  He was pretty mediocre for two seasons, until suddenly finding his groove in his third season, when he picked up almost eight yards on his average for his long punts.  So the big leap is possible, it just may take awhile.  And that could be time Sav doesn't have, given his age entering the league.

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Final punting note.  I received an email yesterday from the brother-in-law of Richmond McGee, the guy the Eagles brought in this year to kick and punt behind both Akers and Rocca in camp this year.  He sent me a link to a nice story about the guy, so I'll share it here. 

I don't think the Eagles are looking to break up the Akers/Rocca field goal combination at this point, but if those two don't keep improving, the team could be looking to make a change this time next year.

Comments

[Bama]

Eagles acquire Luke Lawton from the Colts. WHY????????????????????????????????????

[Jeff]

Ya maybe I'm missing something but I don't fully understand how you can rely on punt stats. We all know Rocca can bomb punts what almost 70 yards? But how often does he get to swing away? Especially last year with the stupid Birds driving to the opponent's 40 every drive before stalling and punting hoping for 30 yard gains? Wouldn't that destroy his average. Isn't that a bigger factor in punting stats than his actual skill? Is there a correlation between punting yard average and inside 20 average and return average because "yardline that you punt from" would seem to me to be by far the biggest driver in any punting statistic, no??

[Me]

Hi Jeff, thanks for the comment.

I control for the field position issue by looking at the situational stats that NFL.com provides. You'll notice above where it says "Long Gross." That's the gross average in plays where the punter is within his own red zone. There's some noise in the data because a punt from the one-yard-line isn't a great place to be bombing, but this is the one place on the field where the punter can completely swing away.

Likewise, the "modified inside 20" percentage strips out those booming punts to only factor in places where the player could legitimately have a chance to pin the other team deep.

I meant to post these two links this morning with the story, but forgot. They explain the methodology I've used in the past for evaluating punters:

http://www.igglesblog.com/iggles_blog/2008/01/sav-rocca-break.html

http://www.igglesblog.com/iggles_blog/2007/06/another_punting.html

Much more information about Sav (and Dirk Johnson) is available by following those links.

[Eric]

I'm not sure what's going to happen to McGee. It sounds like he fully expects to be on this team. Unless they throw him on the practice squad, which seems rather stupid, he's not going to be here by the end of August.

[Jeff]

Excellent. Guess I was missing something haha. Thank you for the response, and great work on the blog I love reading it.