Anyone ever heard of this guy. never punt. always onside kick, 11 guys in the box!!! sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/scorecasting/09/15/kelley.pulaski/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_t11_a2
I have always belived in the onside kick and going for it more often on 4th down. Caveat on that is you have to have a stout Defense and an offense that does not turn the ball over!!!
Some of this just works because it's high school. You could rush a QB with 50 guys and he would still have time to just take the snap, turn, and throw it straight to an uncovered WR. It sounds like the QB tried to wait for uncovered guys to run patterns against air, rather than anyone intelligently altering their play once the D didn't try to cover anybody. A surprise onside kick is about a 50/50 deal. Maybe even better - but the opponent will have fewer yards to go if they recover to compensate. An expected onside kick in college or pro football works at best 1 time out of 7. Punts should be returned unless there's nowhere for the returner to go. The average punt return gains more yards than the average offensive play AND doesn't use up a down if it fails.
I am with the Statalyzer. Of course, I haven't analyzed any stats, but my first thought is this strategy is fine in high school and youth football. There is less discipline and most of the team members are not as athletic as in Div. 1I football and above. The kickers, especially punters, are not as skilled so I can see the advantage of going for it on4th rather than punting. The QB on the 11 -man rush is likely to get rattled and hurry up. It would seem if you had a halfway decent quarterback and one receiver that you could adjust to that strategy fairly easily with some disciplined quick passes to a planned spot. I would love to see someone try this at the college level, though. Maybe the Ags are planning to go to Arkansas and hire this guy as their new OC. Perhaps this is their strategy for taking over the $€C. We all know that $€C teams are not used to high-powered offenses. The more I think about it, this could definitely work for A$M in their new home.
That was a neat read... From what I've been able to dig up it appears that in the NFL , anyway, expected onside kicks have a success rate of 20% or less while unexpected onside kicks are successful more than half of the time. If you don't mind the risk of losing field position it really does seem like an underutilized strategy. I'm no expert but it would seem that Pulaski is able to be successful partially because it's at the high school level and also because they clearly practice the hell out of it. Strong execution is pretty powerful when you're doing something niche that most teams devote little to no practice time to learn to defend.
The Tuesday Morning Quaterback guy on ESPN Page 2 (Gregg Easterbrook) has been pimping this guy for years. If you look back in some of his old columns he has a statistical breakdown of NFL games showing that the theory would apply even in the pros.
