Everybody knows how important an explosive offense or a stifling defense can be for a football team, and everyone can name the big stars on both sides of the ball Ray Lewis, Peyton Manning, LaDainian Tomlinson and Terrell Owens are household names and they make headlines every Sunday. But there is another, less heralded, often overlooked part of a football team that is very important: special teams. Studying special teams can become a valuable part of your handicapping strategy. The five categories of special teams are kickoff, kick return, punting, punt return and field goal teams and there are several factors that come into play with regard to studying them.

Field Position — Winning and losing in the NFL is largely a matter of field position. Field position is determined in large part by special teams. Teams that win the battle of field position often win the game.

Kicker — Placekickers and punters are the keys to special teams. If a team has a guy who can boom a punt from deep in his own territory, or a guy who is accurate in long field goal situations, that translates into better field position and points, respectively, and ultimately results in more victories.

Return Man — A guy with great hands and blinding speed like the Chiefs’ Dante Hall is a game changer capable of scoring anytime he touches the ball, and by virtue of that, he really ups the value of a team’s kickoff and punt return units.

Speed Kills — The old football clich

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 3:16 am and is filed under sport3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.