Who doesn’t love talking about the punter position?
Obviously, this is a position that can and often does fly under the radar. However, the Indianapolis Colts’ Rigoberto Sanchez played an important part in the team’s win on Sunday over the Chicago Bears.
Sanchez ended up punting five times in this game and on all five of those attempts, he pinned the Bears offense inside their own 20-yard line. This was the most punts inside the 20 out of any punter in Week 3, according to PFF.
In addition to that, of those five attempts, only two ended up being returned with the other three being fair catches. On those return attempts, the Colts’ punt return unit limited the Bears return man to just four total yards.
Assisting the fliers and the return team was Sanchez’s average hang-time on his kicks of 4.59 seconds–the eighth-best mark that week.
In a game where both the Bears and Colts’ offenses were struggling to get going for much of the game, winning the field position battle became an important factor in this game.
With the Bears’ running game struggling to get going, totaling just 63 yards on 28 carries, which put more on the plate of a passing game that has battled ups and downs in the early portion of the season.
So having to march the ball 85-plus yards down field was no simple task for the Chicago offense, a unit that averaged just 4.7 yards per play on Sunday.
In the NFL, the ultimate team game where the margin between winning and losing can be razor thin, the field position battle can certainly matter, and Sanchez played a role in helping the Colts win that phase of the game.