Grading the Washington Football Team 2021 special teams
By Hunter Noll
Washington Football Team Punting
Let’s start off with punting. Washington had two punters this year. Tress Way missed one game so Ryan Winslow filled in for a game in Week 17 against the Philadelphia Eagles.
We’re just going to sort of skip over that though when talking about the punting aspect. Let’s just talk about Way for now.
Once again the punter was one of the very best in football. Way finished the year with 60 punts, averaging 48.3 yards per kick. He did struggle a bit with the touchbacks though. Way had 22 kicks land inside the 20 and had seven touchbacks. Not the best rate he’s ever had when it comes to that.
Still, though, Washington’s lucky to have Way. He has an absolute boot, is usually deadly accurate, and rarely doesn’t get good distance on a kick. Overall he gets an A- grade.
However, that’s not all there is when it comes to punting. It’s not just how far the punter can get the football. There’s also protection and stopping the return. Washington was one of the few teams in the NFL that got a punt blocked (at least they only had one unlike the New England Patriots who saw three punts blocked though).
Outside of that, they weren’t exactly good at limiting returns. Opposing teams averaged exactly nine yards per punt return against Washington. That’s not great. In fact, it was the 12th highest number in the league. A little worse than middle-of-the-pack.
So it wasn’t dreadful (the Green Bay Packers led the way allowing 12.8 yards per return). But it certainly made things a lot tougher on the defense than they probably should have been.
That return number is definitely something Washington will want to work on for next season. Having 27 punts returned for an average on nine yards definitely isn’t going to help your defense out. That’s basically like giving them a free first down to start each drive.
Overall though, Way was still booting it pretty far down the field and the position was getting flipped decently even with the long returns. So we can’t bump the grade down too much. And the punting unit still gets a solid grade: B