Iggles Blog - Philadelphia Eagles Blog

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.

Hangin' With David Akers

I have only a few rules on this blog, most of which aren't really important and are actually more like general guidelines rather than rules when it comes right down to it. 

With that said, I think I've decided that my number one rule is that I will gladly put your company name (Reebok) in big bold letters (REEBOK) all over this blog (REEBOK) if your PR firm contacts me and asks if I'd like to speak with one of the Eagles' current players.

I'm talking to you, Campbell's Chunky Soup.

Which is how I ended up talking to David Akers by phone this afternoon.  They said I had five minutes, he ended up giving me 10, and this is how it went:

IB:  What happened last year and what are you doing this summer?

DA:  What happened last year?  Well, we didn't win enough games and this summer we're working hard to change that -- come home with a Lombardi Trophy down Broad Street.  How's that for you?

IB:  That sounds awesome, how about you?

DA:  Myself... I'm really doing a lot of training.  I changed up my routine and I'm doing something a little different.  If you understand, it's really more like a plyo[metrics] and quick explosion ...  Also, lost a little weight, which I didn't really know I needed to lose, but I tried it that way and ended up losing weight and that's been pretty cool. 

I'm actually getting a lot more time with my holder and my snapper, because we were all kind of new last year together.  [We did] pretty well under 40 yards last year and really bad over 40 yards, which made us have a so-so season...

So we're really working on that.  We've all three been here for the whole offseason, so we're doing that together.  And just trying to get better.

IB:  That's awesome.  What's your 40 time at your new weight?

DA:  My 40 time?

IB:  At your new weight...

DA:  Ha ha.  I don't know.  I haven't run 40s for 12 years.

IB:  That sounds about right.

DA:  I ran a 4.6 coming out of college and I haven't run that since then.

IB:  That's gotta be up there for a kicker.

DA:  Yeah, it was pretty good.  Probably out of everybody [which = other specialists], I'd be pretty close to the top of the chain there, except for Buffalo's punter, who's like a world-class sprinter.  I can't mess with Brian Moorman, but everything is going pretty well that way.  I lost actually like eight pounds of fat.  I didn't know I had that much fat to lose.

IB:  That's impressive.  So everything's coming together with Rocca and you feel like some of the holding stuff may be ... we're not gonna see Detmer as a late season signing again?         

DA:  [Pause]  Well I'd never be disappointed about getting Detmer as a late season signing.  [Laughs]  Sav has increased his percentage of hitting the mark, tremendously. Where he left off last year -- the thing is it's the same way he was as a punter.  As you saw the season progress with Sav as a punter, he just increased each week, got better and better.  Take the one week out where they wanted him to do all these crazy punts against Chicago, he had some big, big bombs in crucial games.  So I was really, really impressed the way he improved as the season went on.

And the same thing happened with his holding.  Before, if he got a snap that was a little off, and he had to make adjustments, it was a little slower.  Now, I was just telling some other people that we were actually told this minicamp to slow down.  We were going too fast.  And that's usually the opposite.  Usually you have to kind of speed yourself up, especially this time of year and then you get in through training camp and you find ... how everything needs to be timing-wise and we were right on the money.

I was really, really kind of surprised about that.  I think that was the most consistency as far that goes this early in the season.  Mainly because those years with Koy and Mike, we were always apart during the offseason.  We've had some time to work together this year with Jon and Sav and myself.

IB:  I know you've gotta pay the freight here with the REEBOK thing and the reason we're talking, is there anything you want to say here about that?

DA:  I was talking about this with some other guys, Reebok joined up with me about six years ago -- or I was able to join the Reebok team.  I was having a hard time finding cleats that would benefit the way I kick.  I have a very unique style as far as how I come down on the ball, very much like a golf club does, and I needed some shoes that would actually be able to withstand the impact.  I wanted a football bottom, rather than a soccer bottom, to give me more grip and I wanted a soccer top.  They said fly on up here and we'll design a shoe.  I've been using them ever since, been able to go to the Pro Bowl with them.  So it's really been a great relationship that way. 

But also, doing this offseason training, Reebok came out with this new technology called the Reebok HexRide Rally.  Instead of me having to fly up to their offices to design a shoe, shoot man I can go right over to Dick's Sporting Goods and pick 'em up.  They're only 85 bucks over there.         

Especially this time of year.  People that know me know -- and literally I'm not trying to be some promo guy -- I'm so in tuned to what I have to wear on my feet, both on the field and off.  So when I'm training, I have to have the shoes that feel good to work out in...  For myself and a bunch of other guys in the NFL, it's the only shoe we'll wear.

IB:  That's great, so I guess my last question:  Are you doing any more of those cool commercials this year?

DA:  That's very interesting.  You'll have to ask those guys that. 

That was kind of cool [last year].  It was kind of a last second thing.  That was kind of an interesting thing, because everyone always asks: "Was it real or not real?" 

We went out to a local high school and they said:  "We'd like to do a deal where we snap the ball and you kind of volley it out of the air."   I said, all right, well, how about this, whenever I'm walking around and I have three or four footballs in my hands and I need to grab another one, I kind of kick the ball against my one foot and it pops the ball up in the air so I can just grab it.

So I kind of did something like that, so then I started wondering, what if I could pop it up in the air and kick it?  I popped it up and kicked it and [thought] that's cool, let's try it again.  So we went through the whole thing and it took us about six or seven takes to get it all right, but I did pop it up and kick it.

Did it go 60 yards?  You be the judge.

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All in all, he seemed like a really cool, down-to-earth guy.  And I'm glad to hear about Rocca (as are 100,000 of our Aussie friends). 

Here's that video he was talking about:   

Rapid Fire Round

Yeah, I know, I'm behind schedule these days.  Work's been crazy, new baby, not much news, blahblahblah, excuses, excuses...

Anyway, I've got a few minutes and a backlog of topics to discuss, so let's go rapid fire style:

The usual schedule numbskullery.  Of course I'm not immune to playing the schedule game myself, but it seems like every year the columns that come out around the release of the NFL's schedule get stupider and stupider.  Take this one from the Boston Herald:

The Patriots are coming off the most dominant regular season in history. So naturally they have the easiest schedule in the NFL.

Such are the vagaries of the NFL’s scheduling system, which largely pits divisions against each other and can lead to strange anomalies like the worst-in-football Oakland Raiders having the league’s toughest schedule last year and the second-best Patriots getting the easiest one this year.

Ok, so first of all, no one actually knows how hard or easy a schedule is until you've played through it.  Did anyone around here expect the Green Bay Packers to be so good last year?  The Eagles schedule didn't look so bad last summer but fast forward to January and it turns out it was the toughest in the league.  (One more reason to be optimistic about this coming season's results.)

Secondly, and this is the more important part, the Patriots ... finished ... 16-0 ... last ... year.   So if you're just taking the winning percentages of all the teams they play this year ... and if you're playing eight games against teams you played (and beat) the year before (some twice) ... then obviously that number is going to look a little low. 

And third, just in case you were worried that New England fans/writers would take that Super Bowl loss hard and lose some of the arrogance, this guy sees a schedule that has the Chargers, Steelers, Colts and Broncos on it and thinks:

Imagine talking 16-0 two seasons in a row? If the Patriots stay healthy, as crazy as it sounds, it could be a possibility.

Right, dude.

Rampant pessimism in Philadelphia.  I just don't get this.  I guess it's always fun to play to the negative expectations of Philly fans, but why crap all over the party in April like this:

Months later, reeling under the taunts of fans and colleagues, I was weak enough to reconsider. The Eagles, I wrote, would go 9-7 and had a chance to be 10-6.

Foolish lad. This time I'm going with my first instincts, which tell me 7-9. Tops.

And even that record is not locked in. To get to seven wins, the Eagles would have to earn a rare victory on opening day and a rare win the week before the bye on the road. So 5-11 is not out of the question.

Remember, this is a Philly beat writer.  He then proceeds to go through the schedule game by game.  It's worth reading, if only because he provides really in-depth analysis like this:

Game 4. At Chicago (7-9, last in the NFC North). This is the first of the season's toss-up games, matching teams that went from first to last after losing Super Bowls. The Bears have no quarterback and major problems on the offensive line. Pick: it's a vast stretch, but a win (2-2).

It's a "vast stretch" to think the Eagles could beat a team with "no quarterback and major problems on the offensive line"?  Or this:

Game 9: New York Giants (10-6, wild card, Super Bowl champs). OK, we all agree that Eli Manning's a fraud, that he played way over his head in the playoffs and David Tyree's catch was a miracle that won't be repeated in this century. They're still better than the Eagles. Pick: loss (5-4).

The editors must have cut out the part where he explained why.  And finally, this:

Game 12: Arizona (8-8, second in the NFC West). This is Ken Whisenhunt's second go-round with Matt Leinart and Larry Fitzgerald. The Cardinals actually seem to be going in the right direction. Pick: loss (6-6).

Many a writer has been fooled by the Cardinals before.  But since Matt Leinart isn't even guaranteed the starting job this year, I'm thinking maybe reel those expectations in a bit.

More statistical nonsense from the same guy.  McKee was back today with another column arguing that you shouldn't draft first-round wide receivers because generally they don't have great success their first year in the league:

Miller pointed out that NFL teams have drafted 43 wide receivers in the first round over the last 10 years.  Yet only two had 1,000-yard seasons as rookies - the same number of 1,000-yard seasons produced by receivers drafted after the first round.  According to NFL.com, the only first-round wideouts to go over 1,000 yards receiving in the last 10 years were Minnesota's Randy Moss in 1998 and Tampa Bay's Michael Clayton in 2004.

Which is of course the most important statistic here, and not what a guy does over the entirety of his career.  Especially for the Eagles, since we know every guy they draft is expected to contribute right away...

Watch out for Santana Moss.  This is why I don't want to trade Lito.

Because of a groin injury, wide receiver Santana Moss did not participate in workouts during the previous offseason. And then Moss was slowed because of groin and heel problems during the 2007 season. But Moss, who has taken more time off from training than he has in the past, appeared sharp while catching passes from Campbell and backup Todd Collins yesterday, Campbell said.

"Santana took a different approach to the offseason," Campbell said. "He is such a fast athlete, and whenever you run as many routes as he runs, you tend to put more wear and tear on your legs. This year, we told him to take more time off to get his legs back healthy. Last year, he was fighting so many problems.

"Today, Santana came out and caught passes with us and he looked smooth. He looked like he was right back in the thick of things again. We just told him not to overdo it. The worst thing would be for him to overdo it right now and it affects him later on in the year. Everybody knows how important Santana is to this team."

Although encouraged about how his legs responded, Moss doesn't want to "look too far down the road," he said. "I don't like to get ahead of myself and think about what's going on way before it's time. That's just the type of guy I am. As players we just have to wait until it's time, and then you just have to go play the games."

Right now, we have no idea how well Asante Samuel will match up with this guy.  We also know that Brown provides little more than token resistance for the lightning-quick guys like Moss.  I'm all about first-round picks, but if we want to win it all this year, let's hang on to Lito.  Trade him next year if we have to.

Sav Rocca has some competition.  Since I know there are lots of dedicated Rocca rooters out there, I wanted to pass along this info:

The Eagles brought in a competitor for Sav Rocca yesterday when they signed punter/kicker Richmond McGee to a three-year contract.

McGee was both the punter and the kickoff specialist on Texas' national champion in 2005, when he averaged 37.9 yards per punt, dropping 11 inside the 20-yard line, and kicked off 16 times with five touchbacks.

He averaged 39.6 yards on 130 career punts, while 36 percent of his career kickoffs went for touchbacks. A walk-on at Texas, McGee was a kickoff specialist in 2002. He became the punter in 2003 and earned the Longhorns' special-teams MVP award that season.

McGee converted the only field-goal attempt of his career, a 44-yarder, in 2004.

The 24-year-old McGee will compete with Rocca for a job as the punter and, perhaps, with David Akers for the job of kickoff specialist.

Given how tight the Eagles' roster situation already is, I can't see them keeping yet another situational guy, even if Akers' kickoff strength isn't always what it used to be.  The odds are pretty good that this guy is just a camp body, but the way things have gone this offseason, you just never know.  If Rocca comes back in less that perfect physical condition, we could get a surprise here.

It's also interesting to note that the Eagles generally try to bring in left-footed placekickers because they can lessen Akers' workload without switching up all the other pieces of the operation.  Since McGee is right-footed, we might see another kicker at some point.

Sav Rocca Profile

For the Aussies, I just want to point to a profile of Sav Rocca on the team's website.  It doesn't cover a lot of new ground, but it's a pretty good sum-up of where he is right now.

I would disagree with one part, though:

Rocca had dreams of following in the footsteps of fellow countrymen Darren Bennett, Ben Graham and Mat McBriar. Now he's part of that rich Australian punting pipeline in the NFL. Rocca is the front-runner to remain the team's punter in 2008, although there is likely to be competition.

If by competition you mean "the Eagles will sign another punter before training camp so Sav doesn't wear out his leg in drills," sure.  But if you mean "a guy who could actually beat Sav out for the job," then no, that's not happening.

Sav Rocca Breakdown

Last summer I took a detailed look at Dirk Johnson's punting performance over his last three healthy seasons.  Up to that point, I'd figured Sav Rocca was probably just going to be another training camp body -- a guy who could take some reps to keep the presumptive starter fresh, but not a long-term threat to win the position battle.  After looking at the numbers, I realized Sav had more of a shot than I'd guessed.

This weekend, I did the same analysis with Sav's stats from last season.  I again pulled all the situational stats for all the punters in the league for the comparison, but because the overall numbers weren't that different from the Johnson years, I figured it made more sense just to do a direct comparison between the two guys.

Now, I'll tell you at the top that this isn't going to be one of those "wow, who would have thought that" posts.  In this case, the stats only reinforce what we already thought we knew:

1)  Dirk at his best kicked a little farther than Sav did in his first season.  The "power" statistics listed above represent only those punts from within the Eagles' 1-20 yard lines.  This is the only place on the field where a punter can truly swing as hard as possible, without worrying about a potential touchback.  Sav averaged 46.0 yards on those kicks this season, better than Dirk managed until last season.  Neither figure is that great, but the issue for Dirk was leg strength.  For Sav, it was consistency of technique, which improved as the year went on.

2)  Sav already has better touch than Dirk did.  The accuracy numbers show that Sav was better at avoiding the end zone and better at pinning opponents inside the 20-yard-line.  (The "modified" inside 20 percentage strips out the long kicks described above since it's virtually impossible to get those within the 20-yard-line.)  Sav pinned returners on 10 of his 15 punts from the opponent's half of the field.  While that's still slightly below the league average of 70 percent, it matches the best figure Johnson recorded with the Eagles. 

3)  The return game is where the Eagles most need improvement.  Just under 50 percent of Sav's kicks were returned, which is an improvement over last year and only slightly higher than the league average.  The problem is that those returns were much too long.  Some of that was due to Sav's tendency to kick line drives early in the season, but a lot of that is also a function of the Eagles' poor coverage teams.  It's hard to parcel out blame exactly there, but the bottom line is that Sav's "return damage" stat (average return multiplied by the percentage of kicks returned) was 27th out of the 33 guys who had at least 20 punts this season.  That needs to be fixed.

4)  The bottom line:  Sav was slightly below average in his first season, with overall numbers that were pretty close to what we've seen from Dirk the past few years.  In fact, Rocca's gross and net punting figures were almost exactly in line with Dirk's 2006 stats.  Given that this was his first year punting, we should expect to see improvement in his second season.  And Sav has almost certainly done more that enough to guarantee he'll be back next year.

The Rocca Hit

Here's that shot from Sav.  The sound starts a couple seconds in because I cut some of the initial chatter. 

"He's got the kicker to beat":

Weekly Rocca Report

Lengthy interview with Sav Rocca on the Eagles' official website.

He seems to have a pretty good handle on his efforts to date:

"I knew it was always going to be a slow progress. I'm slowly getting better and it's good to see the numbers start to show. I think it'll get better from here on in. It's good to see things are starting to come together. Obviously, you want, I'd rather every punt to be like 50-yards, but you get some out past 60, it would be great."

The piece also includes the least helpful summary of Aussie Rules I think I've ever seen:

"There are 18 guys on the field. We have to kick goals at either end, one team will be going one way the other team will be going the other. You'll be scattered all over the field. Forwards on defenders one end and the same down the other. We kick the ball to pass. If you catch a ball after a kick, it's called a mark. You go back and you can kick the ball from there on in. We also handle the ball and if you run 15 yards, you have to bounce it. We can tackle as well from anywhere and run around the feet. It's called a trip. You can't hit and have eye contact either."

Now if only he could play some other positions.

For the Aussies

It's a couple days old but I'm just now seeing this story on the league taking notice of Sav Rocca's great effort against the Vikings last week.

Sav Rocca Makes the Team

It's now official, or as official as things get in a world where the Eagles post cuts on their website, then take it down, then pretend it didn't happen, then claim it wasn't a real list.

Here's the news for Sav Rocca from PhillyBurbs.com:

"I just got off the phone with Johnson, who confirmed that he got a call from head coach Andy Reid informing him that the Eagles are releasing him and keeping untested rookie Sav Rocca instead.

"'In my mind, they had their minds made up before that (Jets) game,' Johnson said. 'What did that game prove? If it came down to that game, I’d still be here. If it didn’t, they should have cut me last week, while two teams (Cards and Patriots) were still looking for punters.'"

Now I can't wait to see the first time a punt returner breaks the coverage and Sav gets a free shot at him. 

This Pretty Much Sums It Up for Rocca

Phil Sheridan in the Inquirer:

"If Sav Rocca didn't clinch the punting competition, then there wasn't a punting competition."

Here's a longer article coming to pretty much the same conclusion:

"Because right now it seems crazy to think Johnson, not Rocca will be the choice when the Eagles play for real two Sundays from now in Green Bay. Rocca's average, after a dozen preseason punts, is just over 46 yards. Not factored in this measurement, but clear to the eye, is that he sometimes hits a 42-yard punt as if it is a pooch, and that the height of his boots are often as impressive as the distance."