Kicking, Hitting

The Post-Gazette's Ed Bouchette pithily summarizes his opinion of rookie punter Daniel Sepulveda, whom the Steelers selected after trading up in the 4th round of the NFL Draft: "He punts like Ray Guy, tackles like Jack Lambert, heals like Rod Woodson. If you're going to throw away two draft picks for a punter, make it a good one."

From my highly uninformed, armchair-Moneyball type perspective I think Bouchette's ambivalence is warranted. As he pointed out in his Internet chat this week, Sepulveda's 46.5-yard average is only about three and a half yards longer than the NFL average. I imagine there are some other nonnegligible punting abilities to take into account, but I'd be interested in what the economic value of an elite punter versus an average one is in terms of winning football games. When Steelers' director of football operations Kevin Colbert gushes that Sepulveda is a "big, strong, physical guy" it sounds like he's inflating the value of those qualities in this particular type of niche player based on a general and somewhat romanticized idea of how football players should play.

My point in bringing this up, though, is that the highlight video from Baylor that the article links to is completely great. A top-notch punter might only be a nice-to-have, but a punter laying out the guy returning his punt like that? That's an awesome-to-have.