Rich Hofmann | It's all in the punt
BEARS' HESTER PRESENTS A MAJOR TEST FOR ROCCA
OPPONENTS HAVE screwed up their courage and dropped back to punt the football to the Chicago Bears 37 times this season. Three have been touchbacks, four have resulted in fair catches, and nine others have presumably rolled around and been downed or ended up out of bounds.
That leaves 21 punts, and 20 of those have been returned by Devin Hester - two for touchdowns and all of them to an astounding average of 19.4 yards per return. Put another way, Hester's average return would be the Eagles' second-longest punt return of the season.
Hester returned six kicks for touchdown last season. He is unique among NFL weapons (and we're not even going to talk about his 81-yard touchdown reception as a wide receiver last week). All of which means that The Great Sav Rocca Experiment will see its first memorable results written down on Sunday evening.
"He's great," said Rocca, the Eagles' first-year Australian punter. "He's very evasive. If you give him the ball and give him time, he'll get past a lot of guys. You can see by his stats, he's pretty much the best at the moment . . .
"We'll try a few things out in practice. We haven't set in stone what we're going to do for the weekend. We'll see how we go."
The operating theory is that while there is only so much you can do about kicking away from Hester on kickoffs, you have to go out of your way to try to keep the ball away from him on punts. A little less than half of the time, teams have been successful that way - which still leaves three or four punts per game that Hester brings back against 22 quaking knees.
"We've seen just about every type of game plan you can use," said Lovie Smith, the Bears coach.
"Teams have kicked to him. They've squibbed it. They've pooched it. We've seen just about everything, but I think it's hard to keep the ball away from a certain player."
Overall, teams have seemed to manage the kickoff part of the equation reasonably well. Yes, Hester has brought back one for a touchdown this season, but the Bears' overall kickoff return average is only 20 yards (30th in the league). Of 28 kickoff returns, Hester has taken 19 of them and nine others have gone to different players.
For people who say that it makes more sense just to kick the ball out of bounds and give it to the Bears on the 40-yard line after the penalty, that seems a bit much. Maybe if Hester is killing you on a given day, you kick it out of bounds - but not as a matter of course. Not yet, anyway.
Besides, it is the punt returns that leave you open-mouthed. His average return is almost exactly double that of the league average. His average return is almost 30 percent longer than the next-best regular returner in the NFL.
Which brings us back to Rocca, who got the job over the more-consistent Dirk Johnson based upon his leg and his potential. The problem through five games has been consistency - and this is the week where one false move could end up in your end zone. A lot of attention and a lot of focus will be on Rocca this week.
"He's OK with the pressure," Eagles coach Andy Reid said. "It doesn't seem to bother him. I haven't seen him in awe of the crowds or the game itself. He's kind of been there and done that down in Australia.
"He's been a little bit inconsistent - but his short punts are some people's long punts. That's a plus. He'll get himself in stride as we go on here."
One of the keys will be placement and direction, even more than distance. Nobody is pretending that this is Rocca's absolute forte yet. Rocca himself said, "There are days when I'm really good at it and there are days where it doesn't quite come off so good. We'll be practicing that."
Which, of course, raises the question:
Will Sunday be one of those days?
"It's going to be a team effort," Rocca said "As much as my kick has to be good in [its] direction, we've got to make sure we've got 11 guys out on the field that are after the ball once it hits the deck."
If they don't - and the Eagles have been a below-average punt coverage unit so far this season - the sight of Rocca chasing Hester would, unfortunately for the Eagles, be memorable.
Or, as Rocca said, "Eventually I'll get him . . . when he stops." *
Send e-mail to hofmanr@phillynews.com.
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