O’Donnell Faces More Pressure Than Any Punter

According to NextGen Stats, no punter over the last five years has faced more pressure than the Packers’ Pat O’Donnell this year. Is that a problem? Rich Bisaccia explains.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – There’s a lot of pressure on Green Bay Packers punter Pat O’Donnell to help win the field-position battle given the struggles of the offense and defense.

Literally and figuratively.

According to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats, O’Donnell has been pressured on 23.5 percent of his punts this season. That’s the highest rate in the NFL by a relatively large margin over the last five years, and significantly higher than any other punter this year (Tennessee’s Ryan Stonehouse, 17.1 percent).

Special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia, however, didn’t see the pressure as a problem. Rather, he’s happy with how his group has handled everything that’s been thrown at it by the opposition.

“That’s a strength,” he said when asked about the stat after Thursday’s practice. “We’ve had a punt blocked but we’ve had 33 punts and we have not had a six-man front yet.”

For the punt team, there is one player flanked out wide on each side of the formation. Those players are the fliers. For the return team, there are three ways to deploy the 10 players who are on the field alongside the returner. It can double-team both of the fliers, which means six players to rush. It can double-team only one of the fliers, which means seven to rush. Or it can put one jammer across from each gunner, which means an eight-man rush. The Packers have seen a lot of eight-man rush.

“We have a rookie snapper,” Bisaccia said of Jack Coco. “So, we’re going to get rush after rush after rush.”

Aside from the blocked punt against the Jets, which they scooped up for a pivotal touchdown, they’ve handled the pressure well.

The Jets picked up this blocked punt and scored a touchdown at Green Bay in Week 6. (Photo by Dan Powers/USA Today Sports)

“There’s going to be pressure on every punt,” Bisaccia said. “So, I don’t really know what that stat is or how it’s made up. Again, we haven’t seen a six-man front yet on any of those punts. We’re going to be pressured. I’d like to not give up another block.”

Through eight games, Bisaccia is at the unofficial halfway point of his first season on the job. There have been some good moments and some obvious improvement compared to last year, when a season full of mistakes hit a crescendo in the playoff loss to San Francisco with a blocked field goal and a blocked punt that was picked up for the winning touchdown.

To Bisaccia, what matters after every game is how the special teams contributed to field position. In the key categories, the Packers rank 23rd in starting field position after a kickoff return, 11th in starting field position after a kickoff, 28th in net punting average and 18th in opponent net punting average.

“Well, I think at times we’ve done a good job of covering some kickoffs and I think at times we’ve done a good job at protecting the punter and protecting the kicker,” Bisaccia said. “I think at times we’ve done a really good job of having some punt rush, forcing their punter into some shanks. Obviously, we ended up coming up with a block a few weeks ago or so. Again, it’s never going to be good enough. Where we are statistically, I don’t really look at it. Where we are at the end of each game is really a little bit more important to me, what we did for our offense, what we did for our defense.”

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