02-18-2016, 06:26 AM
The sideline is a 12th defender.Â
Not many things scarier to a punt defense than a returnable ball in the middle of the field; you have to spread the field. If you kick to one sideline instead, you can bracket the returner with a contain guy at around midfield and funnel the returner in a more concentrated mass of defenders.
On a related point, Stanford fans often lament what seems an unnecessarily large number of Stanford kickoffs that go out of bounds, and seem to give the opponent as free 35 yard return. How, they wonder, can a guy who can nail a 55 yard field goal not keep a kickoff in play? Same deal; you want to bring the sideline in as an added defender, and concentrate your return defenders to half the width of the field. It cuts the return man's gaps in half, and also tends to make the returner less decisive; so you see a lot of bad returns on kickoffs near the sidelines.
Not many things scarier to a punt defense than a returnable ball in the middle of the field; you have to spread the field. If you kick to one sideline instead, you can bracket the returner with a contain guy at around midfield and funnel the returner in a more concentrated mass of defenders.
On a related point, Stanford fans often lament what seems an unnecessarily large number of Stanford kickoffs that go out of bounds, and seem to give the opponent as free 35 yard return. How, they wonder, can a guy who can nail a 55 yard field goal not keep a kickoff in play? Same deal; you want to bring the sideline in as an added defender, and concentrate your return defenders to half the width of the field. It cuts the return man's gaps in half, and also tends to make the returner less decisive; so you see a lot of bad returns on kickoffs near the sidelines.