"Special" Teams: Week 2 Production

This was not a good week for special teams. I think we can all agree on that. The penalties alone were maddening. For this week's analysis, I will present two posts. Today's is a follow-on to last week's special teams production points post. Tomorrow (hopefully) I will present some analysis on distance and hang time for this season on punts and kickoffs in Eagles games, as recorded by one die-hard Eagle fan.

The first thing to keep in mind when looking at the production points awarded this week is that the number and type of plays that the Eagles participated in varied substantially from Week 1. As the table below shows, the Eagles had a lot more kick returns -- and a lot fewer kickoffs -- than the prior week. Note that there was also a free kick return this week that I excluded -- wasn't sure if that was included in production points or not. That would lower the points per play even further to 9.2.

The increase in kick returns will naturally impact guys solely on the return team, such as Victor Abiamiri. It will hurt guys who excel in coverage, such as Dimitri Patterson. Here are the individual results, sorted by week 2 output:

My general takeaways:

• Sean Jones did NOT like being deactivated (or taking a pay cut) last week. He just crushed it on special teams this week. While I pointed out last week that it is hard to compare these numbers across years, last year there weren't a lot of performances of 30 or more points in a week. Akeem Jordan had 4 before joining the starting lineup, Quintin Demps had 3, and Sean Considine and Tracy White each had 1. So this was an exceptional effort, a silver lining to a bad day.
• We missed Quintin Demps and Dimitri Patterson. Of course, Patterson played some, but the hand hindered him. Those two should be our top two coverage guys. Having them at 100% would have made a difference, I think.
• Quintin Mikell joined Sheldon Brown in playing special teams. It seems like we shouldn't have to be using starting DBs to play special teams, especially when guys who aren't starting like Ellis Hobbs and Joselio Hanson are contributing relatively little.
• As you can see, players can get negative points in a week. Apparently Daisher wasn't so cool with Jackson's decision making on punt returns this week.