Punting is the act of kicking the ball to the opposing team after your offensive drive has ended. It refers to kicking the ball with the top of the foot before it hits the ground after being dropped from the hands. Punting's purpose is to offer the other team less than ideal field position, making it more difficult for them to score points.
We confirmed the crucial positions in the Special Team based on our data, and Punter is one of them.
We integrated all of our data files based on the players' NFLIDs, and we finalized critical columns that are more closely related and appropriate to creating special team metrics and ranking the players based on them.
We ranked Punters based on their final rating after constructing our special team measure utilizing multiple computed columns and algorithms dependent on their position. The top 10 punters, as well as all punters, are listed below in order of their rank:
Punters Kick Accuracy
This metric was calculated by determining if the desired kick direction matches the actual kick direction for all of a player's punts. The chart below depicts a player's average kick accuracy.
Net Punting Average
It's one of the most essential elements, and it's based on how far the punter kicked the ball (kick length) and how far the opposition was able to push the ball back after they kicked it (return yardage).
Punters Kick Success & Return Ratio
Punters Kick Success was determined using the above-mentioned Kick Accuracy and the kick length. So, if the punt's desired direction is the same as the actual direction and the kick's length is long, the punt can be deemed a success. As a result, we analyzed each player's kick success as well as their return ratio, or how many of the total punts were returned, in order to determine which punts were superior based on kickReturnYardage.
Returnable Punts has been calculated by when punter did a punt (specialTeamsPlayType = "Punt") and that resulted in Return (specialTeamsResult = "Return").
Special Team Metric for Punters
The Special Team Metric for Punters include the individual players' mean speed, acceleration, distance, total punts, returnable punts, hang time, kick direction, kick length, kick return yardage, kick success, punt failure, return punts ratio, net punting average and final rating.
Punt failure has been calculated keeping in mind that even if the accuracy and kickLength are greater, kickReturnYardage will ruin the overall punt.
Based upon all the different dimensions that have been calculated for a player, a final numeric rating has been calculated and based upon that the players are ranked. The final special team metric and ranking provides the info for the top players based upon their position and the play type in a football game.
The below visualization shows the players mean speed and distance of the punters which can be used by coaches for their strategic planning while playing the special team and considering their opponents players.