No Pride, Little Joy For Once Famed Virginia Tech Punt Return Unit
The downfall of Virginia Tech's special teams, and especially the punt return team, is a classic case study in which came first: the chicken or the egg
Think about it, if Virginia Tech hadn’t been at the forefront of special teams excellence in the 1990s, if the Hokies had merely been good, how would the story of Hokie football be different?
There is no way the team would have played in the 2000 Sugar Bowl (see exhibit 1: Miracle in Morgantown).
In fact, I doubt the Hokies would have ever won 10 games without featuring top 1% special teams units year after year.
After more than a decade at the top, sometime around 2005 things began to slip. It was gradual and inconsistent. There were still moments of excellence, but they mostly came in the return game.
No one is afraid of Beamer’s beloved pride and joy unit anymore. I would guess that Tech blocked a punt at some point in the last three years, but I can’t remember it off the top of my head.
Lately, even the punt return team has been pedestrian, at best.
Twenty years ago, the Hokies could hardly go three games without blocking a punt. It used to be so much fun to watch opposing punters squirm around before the snap, try to hurry their motion, and end up doing something stupid like dropping the ball or failing to even get the punt off.
Clearly, it is a multi-faceted issue, but football is a Jimmies and Joes sport, so this analysis will focus solely on the players - namely, which ones are getting significant snaps on the punt return team and how are those choices impacting the unit’s performance as a whole.
Setting the table
There are two main arguments one can make about the punt return unit. The first is that its struggles have been a driver of the team’s poor play of late. The second is that the team’s struggles have been a driver of the punt return unit’s poor play.
One thing is for certain - special teams are not what they once were in Blacksburg.
PFF data go back to 2016, which was Justin Fuente’s first year as head coach. The eye test at the time told me that in the late Beamer period, the various special teams units were still well coached, but they no longer featured elite playmakers, with the exception of punt returner.
In 2016, though, excellent, if not outright elite, play returned.
According to PFF, James Shibest’s 2016 special teams unit was 10th nationally. They were not blocking punts left and right, but they did have a major impact on games.
No one knew it at the time, but there was a future first round draft pick on the receiving end of that Mitchell Ludwig jump shot in the 2016 ACC Championship Game.
Fast forward to 2022 and the talent difference is stark. While some of that is due to an overall decline in talent within the program, much of it comes down to who actually played on the punt return unit.
In 2016, one reserve player saw major snaps on the field goal block unit - Anthony Shegog, who was only a reserve because of his tweener body type. Too big to be an every down safety and too small to be an every down linebacker, he shined as a linebacker in the nickel and dime packages.
In 2022, the top 11 players on the punt return unit, by number of snaps, were all starting caliber players.
(Note: starting caliber player is the unit of measure because the official starting lineup often fluctuates based on offensive or defensive package, injuries, and because some players may not start in a given year, but may go on to be stars later, something the coaches can surely see years in advance)
The big difference lies on the punt return unit. PFF does not separate punt block from punt return, but rather groups them together. So, in layman’s terms, these are the guys on the field when the other team is lining up to punt the ball back to the Hokies.
This unit featured eight starting caliber players in 2016, but only four in 2022. And if those figures are not stark enough, consider the following:
Bryce Duke and Jaden Keller are two of the four players grouped in the starting caliber bucket, a projection in both cases
One of the non-starting caliber players on the 2016 team was Johnathan Galante, a walk-on who is currently the Special Teams Coordinator at Marshall and was previously a Special Teams Analyst at Alabama
Five players from the 2016 unit were drafted or played in the NFL and a sixth, Cam Phillips, was a record setting receiver at Virginia Tech who has gone on to success in the XFL and CF
The only player on the 2022 unit who might have an NFL future is Keli Lawson
Chicken or egg
Ultimately, this is a chicken or egg situation when it comes to disentangling what caused what. There is also another factor - the change in coaching staffs.
One could posit that under Pry the strategy is to play less starters on the punt return unit, but that would be a fallacy. At this point, all that is known is that under the conditions Pry inherited in 2022, the staff decided it was best to feature mostly reservists.
This entire analysis may, in fact, be biased by heretofore unseen confounders, such as body type. Remember, both 2016 and 2022 were coaching transition years. The two staffs were, often times, putting players recruited for a certain role in an entirely different role because the first disappeared with the change in schemes.
In 2016, the players who got the most snaps on the punt return unit tended to be long and lean, like Brandon Facyson, Adonis Alexander, Divine Deablo, and Bucky Hodges.
The 2022 unit featured a mix of lean and tall types (like Connor Blumrick and Keli Lawson), shorter stocky guys (like Dax Hollifield and Keshon Artis) and smaller DB types (most of the rest).
Another possible confounder is the roster makeup. In 2016, the talent was predominantly concentrated among the juniors and seniors.
The reverse was true in 2022. Outside of a few experienced older players, most of the talent, such that it existed, was to be found among the first and second year players. The advantage of experience that the older players had was negated by a new coaching staff that employed a new system.
The takeaway
The cupboard is no longer empty. There are more long, lean, and athletic linebacker types in the program than I can count on one hand. In fact, one could argue, convincingly, that there are more such players of starting caliber than there are spots available in the starting lineup.
There are also known quantities, namely Tucker Holloway and Jaylin Lane, ready to step in and excel at return duties.
Finally, assuming some measure of improvement from both the offense and defense, there should be more snaps played by all members of the punt return team in 2023.
Consider this: Elijah Howard, who finished second on the team in snaps in 2022, played the same number of snaps as Greg Stroman (53), who finished tenth on the the 2016 team.
My expectation is that we will see 7 to 8 starting caliber players among the top 11 in punt return snaps in 2023, and that the unit will manage a pair of blocks and maybe one return for a touchdown. That should be enough, assuming otherwise decent play, to improve the unit grade from 72nd in the country in 2022 to somewhere in the mid-40s.
It may also be worth an extra win, or two.