I realize I'm a little late on this, but I wanted a little time to think about it. At this point, I have heard way too many people blame the Denver Broncos' loss to the Chicago Bears on Sunday on Denver's decision to kick to Devin Hester.
I have some problems with this. The first is how much I hate it when games are blamed completely on individual plays or players. Yes, it's possible for a guy to play so poorly that he negates the efforts of everyone else, but it's very rare. Can a player win a game single-handedly? I guess, theoretically, but I've never seen it.
More to the point, why shouldn't the Broncos kick to Devin Hester?
Don't get me wrong. Hester is an incredible punt returner, and perhaps the most effective weapon in Chicago's arsenal. He's a threat to change the course of a game every time he touches the ball.
Hester's so fast, his speed rating in this year's Madden is the first time in the game's history where a player received a score of 100 in any category.*
But does Hester take kicks back so frequently that teams have to live in mortal fear of him? No. ESPN.com has him down for eighty punt returns in his career, six of which have gone for touchdowns (7.5%). He's scored four times on his fifty-one career kick returns (7.8%). Now, that's more often than most anyone else; but the odds whether he'll score a touchdown on any given kick are clearly in the covering team's favor. (Those are regular-season stats, and he did score on the opening kick in last year's Super Bowl, too.)
The biggest problem, really, is that Hester got ten chances to make a return Sunday (five on punts, five on kickoffs). But outside of his touchdowns, he wasn't really that dangerous. That sounds stupid, because it is, but it's not that he can't be stopped, just that the Broncos didn't stop him on those particular plays.
The Hester situation reminds me a lot of Barry Bonds, especially considering how inept the rest of his team's scoring options can be. But if there's one thing I've hated in recent years, it's how some teams have been too terrified even to pitch to Bonds. Instead of giving it their best shot, they send a pitcher out there, in front of literally thousands of people, and wave the white flag, saying, "I'm/We're not man enough to challenge you." (What's the shame in giving up a homer to someone everyone thinks cheated anyway?)
The worst offender, of course, was the Anaheim Angels of 2003, who faced a lights-out Bonds in the World Series and pitched to him only when the games were out of hand. Are you really the best if you have to exploit a rule that lets you give a guy a base when you know you can't hold him to just one? Of course not. The Angels winning it all, now there's something that deserves an asterisk.
Fortunately, and this is my other point, the NFL has no such rule. Hester's second touchdown came on a kickoff return. You know you can't just angle those out-of-bounds at the two, right? What were the Broncos supposed to do, Einstein? They can squib it, but the Bears would have ended up with the ball around the 35 or 40 anyway. Punts are a different story, but I doubt Sauerbrun's sideline precision would make anyone forget Mike Horan as it is. The Broncos took a chance, and it cost them the game, but gosh, that's better than not taking chances at all, isn't it?
Sports are supposed to be about entertainment and competition, and I'm glad the Broncos didn't take the easy road out. Line 'em up, go toe-to-toe, and see who comes out on top. Teams: by all means, be cautious. Don't make it easy on Hester, who doesn't need you to anyway. But giving up a touchdown is a lot better than quitting in front of everyone.
* = While we're on football videogame news, and you guys are welcome for my not making a whole post about this, but my favorite megacorporation news of the week is Microsoft adding the Xbox version of ESPN NFL 2K5 to its Xbox 360 backwards compatibility list. Yes!
Comments
And I agree that you can't lay all of the blame on Sauerbrun - where was the kick coverage team?
But I still think we should have found a way to keep the ball out of Hester's hands, for two reasons. First, we let him return not one, but TWO, kicks on us. After the first one, we should have realized that our coverage wasn't going to get it done - the Colts faced a similar situation in last year's Super Bowl after Hester went all the way on the opening play. There was definitely something we could have done to prevent the second TD, which was far more damaging than the first.
Which leads me to my second point - it is true that a kick return for a TD is a low percentage play and that all TD's are worth six points, but some plays are obviously bigger than others. And I think the second TD was a major turning point in the game.
So, I would have at least kicked him into a corner on punts - any punter can turn his body and kick diagonally, and even if the ball doesn't go out of bounds, it is easier to contain the returner. I might have considered kicking it out of bounds, or at least into a corner, on kick-offs as well: the Bears weren't going to decline field position at their own 40 (precisely because a return yielding better field position is a rarity, even for Hester), and the way their offense was playing, there was no danger of them scoring even if they started off there.
And speaking of punting the ball out of bounds, whatever happened to the angle punt? Everyone is obsessed with punting the ball high and downing it inside the 5 - but every time I see the ball roll into the end zone (which is about 99% of the time that play is tried), I wonder why the punter didn't just kick it out of bounds anywhere inside the 20. Makes me long for the days of Mike Horan.
And it does make some sense to kick it out of bounds on kickoffs if you know you can't stop the guy. (And you're right, the Bears would take it on the 40. And I guess I meant I like the NFL more than MLB because the 40-yard-line is much more dangerous than giving a cleanup hitter first base.) But I don't know if giving up a return on a punt necessarily means you should assume you can't stop him on kickoffs—perhaps the Broncos' coaching staff knows that their kick coverage is way better than their punt team and was less concerned (personally, I have no friggin' idea). All I'm really saying is that I think it's at least a defensible decision, while lots of people are acting like kicking to Hester on a kickoff after a PR TD was the worst call in history.
The other funny thing about the Hester-Bonds comparison is, um, wasn't Sauerbrun the one using steroids?