Why put someone back to return punts at all?

Opposing team is literally giving you the ball. ~60% of punts are either fair catches or unreturnable (ie. kicked out of bounds or into endzone). The remaining 40% are returned with about 3.5% being muffed and 0.6% being returned for a touchdown. The ratio of # of muffs vs. the number of punts returned for a touchdown is astonishingly high. That stat alone should indicate we really shouldn't even put a man back there to risk the muff.

There's the argument that you put a man back there to catch balls to avoid the ball rolling deeper into our territory which is fair, but I think when the opposing team is punting outside their own 35 yard line, you really should not even put a man back there. The average punt return yardage is like 12 yards so it's really not overly material. These special teams slip ups are how less superior teams can level the playing field in a game. Just hard to think of the upside of even trying to touch a punt inside your own 20 late in a game. 'Oh but dude he could return it!' Well yeah but statistically there's a 10x greater chance he muffs it and we lose the game. The distribution of possible outcomes is way skewed to the negative.