I know … punters … who cares. Say the word punter to me and one thing comes to mind … watching Ray guy and the hang time clock on TV. And knowing his punts were probably going around 45 yards in normal circumstances. Some reason I clicked on the punting stats and noticed dang near all punters were around 45 yards with 17 over 45 in total. So I look up the last few years and got this :
Number of punters averaging over 45 yards by year :
2011 – 17
2010 – 8
2009 – 11
2008 – 9
2007 – 7
2006 – 5
2005 – 4
2004 – 2
2003 – 1
2002 – 1
I spot checked all the way back intot he 1960′s and every year you may have one, or two guys hitting that 45 yard average benchmark. Now the NFL average is 45.27/YDS. In 2000 it was 41.89/YDS. Now 3.38 yards different may not sound like much, but with 2,500 punts in a year that ads up to 8,450 additional yards an offense had to go to score.
Was there something I missed with a change in balls? Are punters actually turning into athletes?
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