Pats 2011 Special Teams snaps
With a tip of the hat to Tom Curran at Comcast SportsNet New England, here is a look at which New England Patriot players played how many snaps on special teams. I found it interesting that the leader was not ST captain Matthew Slater, but was actually Tracy White.
 Julian Edelman returned 28 punts for 300 yards in 2011, including a 72-yarder for a touchdown against the Chiefs. |
A couple other things stood out to me as well. For as many special team aces as Bill Belichick likes to keep on the roster, those two plus Sergio Brown were the only ones that logged more than 50% of the ST snaps. The special teams units are quite diverse: while there is a core group of eight (seven if you exclude kicker Stephen Gostkowki) logging 40% of the snaps, after that there are a lot of players participating on the kamikaze squads. Fifteen players participated in 30% or more of the snaps, 19 in at least 25%, and 26 - that's essentially half of a 53-man roster - were in on at least 17% of the special teams snaps. 36 different players were on the field for at least 10% of the ST snaps, and a whopping 54 players were on the field for at least one special teams snap over the course of the season.
A couple other things that perhaps only I find interesting: Julian Edelman ranked lower than I would have expected, placing 15th on the list with 30% of the snaps, while Devin McCourty (14th, 32%) and Rob Gronkowski (9th, 37%) were a bit higher than anticipated.
In al the Patriots had 460 special teams snaps in 2011. Here is a breakdown of the number of snaps for each of the eight special teams units.
33 -- Field Goal attempts
23 -- opponent FG attempts
57 -- Punts
67 -- oppponent Punts (punt returns)
59 -- Extra Points
38 -- opponent Extra Point attempts
82 -- Kickoff returns (46 returned, 36 touchbacks)
101 -- Kickoff coverage (60 returned, 41 touchbacks)
Tracy White (306) 66.3%
Matt Slater (278) 60.43%
Sergio Brown (269) 58.4%
James Ihedigbo (200) 43.48%
Stephen Gostkowski (195) 42.39%
Kyle Arrington (192) 41.74%
Antwaun Molden (187) 40.65%
Rob Ninkovich (186) 40.43%
Rob Gronkowski (168) 36.52%
Niko Koutouvides (164) 36.65%
Danny Woodhead (160) 34.78%
Zoltan Mesko (151) 32.83%
Danny Aiken (150) 32.61%
Devin McCourty (149) 32.39%
Julian Edelman (139) 30.22%
Dane Fletcher (135) 29.35%
Jeff Tarpinian (135) 29.35%
Ross Ventrone (133) 28.91%
Nate Solder (116) 25.22%
Gary Guyton (97) 21.09%
Ryan Wendell (96) 20.87%
Brian Waters (90) 19.57%
Josh Barrett (80) 17.39%
Matt Light (80) 17.39%
BenJarvus Green-Ellis (79) 17.17%
Logan Mankins (79) 17.17%
Dan Connolly (69) 15.00%
Jermaine Cunningham (67) 14.57%
Jerod Mayo (65) 14.13%
Vince Wilfork (64) 13.91%
Patrick Chung (60) 13.04%
Kyle Love (59) 12.83%
Donald Thomas (58) 12.61%
Stevan Ridley (58) 12.61%
Nate Jones (47) 10.31%
Shane Vereen (46) 10.00%
Brandon Deaderick (39) 8.48%
Shaun Ellis (36) 7.83%
Wes Welker (32) 6.96%
Malcolm Williams (32) 6.96%
Sterling Moore (27) 5.87%
Nick McDonald (22) 4.78%
Marcus Cannon (21) 4.57%
Lousaka Polite (17) 3.70%
Kevin Faulk (16) 3.48%
Brandon Spikes (12) 2.61%
Eric Moore (10) 2.17%
Landon Cohen (6) 1.30%
Andre Carter (5) 1.09%
Aaron Hernandez (5) 1.09%
Alex Silvestro (5) 1.09%
Dan Koppen (2) 0.43%
Myron Pryor (1) 0.22%
Mike Wright (1) 0.22%
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