Bear Digest

How Bears Make Fourth-Round Punter Seem Like a Wise Move

Analysis: Punter Tory Taylor definitely has the ability to spin the ball so it is easier to down inside the 20 but is this important enough to justify using a fourth-round pick?

Gene Chamberlain

Tory Taylor steps into a punt during warmups at Halas Hall practice. The former Iowa punter was the Bears' fourth-round pick.
Tory Taylor steps into a punt during warmups at Halas Hall practice. The former Iowa punter was the Bears' fourth-round pick. / David Banks-USA TODAY Sports
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During Bears minicamp, coach Matt Eberflus had plenty of veterans to observe on the practice field.

He spent good amount of time, instead, watching the antics of his rookie punter, fourth-round pick Tory Taylor.

"He's like a trick-shot guy," Eberflus said.

You'd have thought Eberflus had been watching a golf pro landing wedge after wedge just beyond the hole, then spinning them back within leather for gimmee putts.

"It's like, wow, the spin he could put on it," Eberflus said. "The one he almost had, he had a couple on the 1(-yard line) of course. But the spin he could put on it ... really amazing. So it's fun to watch."

Taylor really did display this knack throughout offseason work for knocking punts out of bounds in the coffin corner or for having them hang high enough so someone could come down underneath to kill them near the goal line.

When Ryan Poles used a pick from the first round of the draft's final day on a punter and not a needed edge rusher, he earned more than a few poor grades or demerits on draft day report cards.

So pressure is on the Bears rookie punter to be this trick-shot artist they say, or Poles' pick will look foolish.

"The opinions outside this building, there's not much I can do," the Aussie-born Iowa Hawkeye said. "I really just worry about what I can control and really, I'm just trying to get better as a punter.

"I don't really worry about any of the external stuff."

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The entire idea seems rather outdated for this modern era of passing the football.

Sure, field position meant a lot when teams ran the ball 60% of the time in the 1960s and earlier. Now, it seems like a luxury item to have a punter who is good at pinning teams back and it's not even a trait anyone labels essential.

Actually, though, it can be big even in today's game.

It's not important to pile up big numbers in terms of pinning opponents back. Actually, it's probably an indication of offensive weakness.

A team with a punter leading the league in number of punts downed or fair caught inside the 20 can simply be a bad offense that needs to punt all of the time. The better offenses today go on fourth down in that area because they like their chances of advancing the sticks.

Over the last five years in the NFL, teams in the top 10 for number of downed punts inside the 20 had no real advantage over other teams. In fact, more of them missed the playoffs and had bad records than made the playoffs and posted winning marks.

Last year only three playoff teams (Houston, Cleveland, Pittsburgh) had punters in the top 10 in downing punts inside the 20. In 2022 it was three playoff teams again and the year before only two. There were four in 2020 and five in 2019, and in those five seasons the teams that finished in the top 10 for downing punts inside the 20 also finished with cumulative losing records each time. They were 22-under .500 in 2023, 13-under in 2022, 21-under in 2021, nine-under in 2020 and five-under in 2019.

This doesn't say a thing about punting's importance with field position, though. It only said losers punt a lot trying to get it downed inside the 20.

The percentage is what counts and in every one of those five years the combined record of the 10 teams with the highest percentage of punts downed inside the 20 was above .500. In fact, they were 44 games over .500 in 2019. Only once did less than half the teams doing this make the playoffs--2022 when only four did. In 2019 seven of the 10 teams ranked in the top 10 in punt percentage downed in the 20 made the playoffs. Half the teams made it in each of the other three years.

So when Taylor is punting this season, the Bears need to keep close tabs on the percentage of his punts being downed inside the 20.

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They also need to be judicious in using this weapon or going for a long field goal or going for the first down, because the numbers show there is no great advantage to total number of punts downed in the 20. There is for having a high percentage of them wind up dead there.

If Taylor is able to accomplish this, then the complaining about a fourth-round pick for a punter will seem like just so much useless noise

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven

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Gene Chamberlain

GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.