Some Love for the Special Teams (Stats - UPDATED WK 4)

With all of the love for the offense being thrown around, I thought it would be good to summarize our excellent special teams performance over the first FOUR games of the season! LSU is currently ranked #2 in the SP+ (formerly S&P+) special teams ratings.

Place Kicking
Cade York, true freshman, has made 7/7 field goals (long 48 yards) and 28/29 extra points. Cade is tied for #11 in FBS and #3 in the SEC in FG made. He's obviously tied for #1 in FG percentage. We all know Mr. York had some big shoes to fill, and I'm thrilled that we will keep this young man for a few more years!

Kickoffs
Avery Atkins has kicked off 41 times, with 38 touchbacks and 2 KO's returned for a total of 29 yards. Avery's touchback percentage (93%) is #1 in FBS. Despite leading the country in total kickoffs, LSU is allowing only 7.3 KO return yards per game (#4 in FBS). As expected, Avery Atkins continues to completely eliminate the opposing teams' KO return game from the equation.

Punting
Zach Von Rosenberg has only had to punt 11 times through four games. Only one SEC team (Florida) has punted less than LSU. Still, Von Rosenberg has been a weapon. LSU's 45.3 yard net punting average is #5 in the SEC. Of Von Rosenberg's 11 punts, 7 have been inside the 20 yard line and 6 have been 50+ yards.

Punt Returns
It's a little disingenuous to throw up Trey Palmer's average here (he's technically #1 in FBS if you don't qualify by number of returns), but I will say that LSU is the only FBS school with two punt return TD's in the first four games of 2019. One was Palmer's return, the other was the blocked punt vs. Vanderbilt.

That said, Derek Stingley Jr. is averaging 11.8 yards per punt return. That's good enough to put the true freshman at #19 in FBS (when ranking players with at least 3 PR). I think Stingley will be ranked even higher as we get a larger sample size - of the 11 players ahead of him, only 4 have fielded as many punts as Stingley and 8 are ranked that high because of a touchdown.

Kickoff Returns
LSU's kick return average (28.8 yards) is a respectable #12 in FBS and #1 in the SEC.



ETA: Edited with week 4 stats.