UCLA Football: On dedicated special teams coordinators and lawn chairs

With the subject of Chip Kelly not having a dedicated special teams coordinator, Go Joe Bruin’s Chris Osgood analyzes UCLA Football’s special teams outcomes compared to the rest of the Pac-12.

During the Monday, November 5 media availability for UCLA football head coach Chip Kelly, the entire press corps asked a much better than usual set of questions; they went deep into subjects such as WR catching technique and fair catch direction given to the players.

Then at the 5:00 mark, Chip and Ben Bolch had a fascinating exchange on the topic of special teams coaching. Bolch asked Chip if he had considered a full-time special teams coach (as a reaction to the special team’s gaffes this week), and Chip went into a full-on annoyed dismissive hypotheticals-are-silly mode. Chip’s main point was that a dedicated coordinator would be using position players that he can’t monopolize for 100% of practice time.

Ben took to twitter to explore the Pac-12 landscape of dedicated Special Teams coordinators.

Chip Kelly scoffed at the idea of a designated special teams coordinator, which is interesting considering six Pac-12 schools have them: USC (John Baxter), Oregon (Bobby Williams), Oregon State (Jake Cookus), Stanford (Pete Alamar) Arizona (Jeremy Springer) & ASU (Shawn Slocum).
— Ben Bolch (@latbbolch) November 5, 2018

I’m not trying to throw shade at Bolch here, he got me honestly wondering if those 6 schools have anything measurable to show for their dedicated coordinators.

I took all the special team efficiency ratings from the SBN (@SBN_Billc) statistical profile for Pac-12 teams and compared dedicated ST coordinator team results to no dedicated ST coordinator team results (measures explained here!). I didn’t take any time to normalize for specialist player star rankings, win/loss records, the experience of players or anything like that.

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Looking over the top, the average Special Teams S&P+ ranking of the no dedicated coordinator teams is surprisingly 19 spots BETTER! Special teams coordinators get you good kickoff coverage, kickoff returns, and punt returns, apparently. No dedicated coordinators teams are better in the Pac-12 this year at FG value and Punt coverage.

UCLA is shockingly ranked 2nd in the P12 in ST S&P+ (19th in nation), even after the mess at Oregon (things such as false starts on kicks don’t hurt them on these measures though). UCLA is very good at FGs and Punt coverage, but really bad at anything kickoff related and punt returns. The things that UCLA is good at correlate with their solid and experienced specialists (JJ Molson and Stefan Flintoft). The things that UCLA is bad at correlate with their young position players needing to stay disciplined.

I think this (granted, very simplistic) view of things sides with Chip’s responses for today. That being said, the things UCLA is weak at are also the things the rest of the no dedicated coordinator teams are weak at. The opportunity to improve in those areas has to be balanced against what you give up in the coaching slot you take away.

Related Story. The 30 Greatest UCLA Football Players of All-Time. light

Utah is the Pac-12 #1 with an overall 4th ranking in NCAAF. Oregon State (110th nationally) with a dedicated ST coordinator and Washington without one (111th nationally) are the dregs of the Pac-12 specials. Here’s the google doc for the table in case anyone finds something useful to do with it.