Sports Reference Blog

Approximate Value Added for Kickers and Punters

Posted by Neil on June 14, 2013

Today, we added a new feature to our popular Approximate Value metric on the site -- AV totals for kickers and punters. (Don't worry, we've warned Doug Drinen, and he hasn't suffered any adverse health side-effects that we know of.)

The methodology is described in tortuous detail on the AV formula page, but we basically looked at salary data to calibrate kicker and punter AV against our existing AV data, and used some simple metrics (kicking points added above average using distance data; punting gross yards per attempt w/ an adjustment for blocks) to measure kicking/punting performance. The best career AVs in each category are as follows:

Kicker AV Punter AV
Morten Andersen 97 Shane Lechler 51
Gary Anderson 91 Sean Landeta 50
Jason Hanson 83 Jerrel Wilson 48
Nick Lowery 82 Rohn Stark 45
Lou Groza 81 Ray Guy 44
Jan Stenerud 79 Jeff Feagles 42
George Blanda 78 Reggie Roby 41
John Kasay 72 Lee Johnson 38
Matt Stover 70 Bobby Walden 38
Jim Bakken 69 Rich Camarillo 37
John Carney 66 Chris Gardocki 37
Norm Johnson 65 Dave Jennings 37
Eddie Murray 64 Bobby Joe Green 37
Fred Cox 62 Craig Hentrich 36
Jason Elam 60 John James 33
Jim Turner 59 Bryan Barker 33
Mark Moseley 57 Todd Sauerbrun 32
Al Del Greco 55 Brian Hansen 32
Ryan Longwell 54 Matt Turk 31
Garo Yepremian 54 Mark Royals 31

We're still working out some AV kinks (particularly in terms of All-Pro bonuses) with certain players who played both kicker/punter and another position -- think Lou Groza -- but for the most part we're happy with the results, and we thought it was time special-teamers got their AV due.

Related posts:

  1. Things I Learned From the New PFR Play Finder: QBs in the Clutch
  2. Approximate Value and Hall of Fame Standards

This entry was posted on Friday, June 14th, 2013 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Advanced Stats, Announcement, Features, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Statgeekery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “Approximate Value Added for Kickers and Punters”

  1. Topher Doll Says: June 15th, 2013 at 5:48 pm

    Fantastic! Glad there has been improvement in terms of special teams and AV.

  2. Ryan Says: June 18th, 2013 at 11:18 pm

    Bobby Walston is an AV Hall of Famer now @ 120.
    George Blanda is deserving @ 108.

  3. Neil Says: June 19th, 2013 at 8:45 am

    #2 - That looks like a bug. For instance, Walston should only be getting 2 kicking AV in 1956, to go with the 4 AV he had as a receiver -- no way is that a 17-AV season. We'll take a look.

  4. Ryan Says: June 19th, 2013 at 6:02 pm

    Weighted AV:

    Yale Lary is @ 25 on personal page but 104 on the all-time weighted list.

    George Blanda is @ 108 on personal page but under 90 on the all-time listing.

  5. ryan Says: June 20th, 2013 at 7:22 pm

    I noticed a lot of guys are showing zero av, like charles haley...under reevaluation?