Sports blog information from USA TODAY.
The Packers defense could go from good to great if these five defensive players bounce back during the 2021 season.
The Green Bay Packers defense could take a sizable leap forward – possibly going from good to great – if a handful of veteran players bounce back from disappointing 2020 seasons and re-establish themselves as consistently reliable starters.
Joe Barry’s group has plenty of star power, but it’ll fall on the complementary players to get better and push everyone to the next level.
Here are five defensive players needing to bounce back in 2021:
Townsend didn’t have a good game against the Buccaneers in Week 12.
Kansas City Chiefs rookie punter Tommy Townsend has been rock solid this season. Expectations were high when he was brought on to replace 15-year veteran Dustin Colquitt and he hasn’t disappointed. Yet, in Week 12 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Townsend didn’t have a good game.
He recorded his second-lowest yards per punt average of his professional career. He had one punt returned, though, only for two yards. The worst thing was that he was surrendering good field position to Tom Brady when he had a chance to pin them back deep.
Chiefs ST coordinator Dave Toub didn’t hold his tongue when talking about his rookie punter on Thursday. He called this the worst game of Townsend’s career and expects him to do better moving forward.
“Tommy was off to a really, really good start,” Toub said. “He probably had — he’s coming off his worst game last week. We had four punts. They were effective punts, but not great punts. [Do] you know what I mean? They hit the ground, rolled, really good for us. But at the end of the day, a little bit better, we need better punts there. He’s coming off his worst game, I’m looking for him to bounce back this week. He had a couple of pooch punts that the angle was a wrong angle, too much of angle. It seemed like we were trying to kick it away from Antonio Brown, but we really weren’t. We were just trying to get it down there in the corner of the field. So those things we need to work on. He’ll bounce back this week and have a good week.”
On the season thus far, Townsend has 33 total punts with 17 of those landing inside of the 20-yard line. His long punt is 67 yards and According to PFF, only 27.3% of his punts have been deemed returnable. Toub doesn’t believe this has anything to do with Townsend hitting the dreaded “rookie wall.”
“I find that hard to believe with him,” Toub said. “Basically because we don’t punt that much. It’s not like we’re out there hitting a lot of punts. 2-4 punts a game, I mean, I don’t think that’s an issue really. It could happen, but I don’t think that’s something that we’d even talk about really.”
Townsend is due for a bounceback game against the Broncos in Week 13. Back in Week 7, when the Chiefs first faced Denver, Townsend had three punts totaling 133 yards. One punt was returned for no yards during that game. He won’t have the favor of working with the tin Denver air, but he will have the comfort of playing in front of a home crowd.
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Fisher finished the postseason with the Chiefs on a high note and could be due to bounce back.
Kansas City Chiefs left tackle Eric Fisher had a great start to the 2019 NFL season in Jacksonville in Week 1. He’d suffer an injury in practice ahead of Week 2 that would take him out for nine weeks. His eventual return would come in Week 11 against the Los Angeles Chargers in Mexico City.
Recently, Anthony Treash of Pro Football Focus sought to name one bounce-back candidate for each NFL team. He chose Fisher as someone who could turn the page on the 2019 season and have a much better 2020 season. Here is what Treash had to say about Fisher:
“There really aren’t any glaring bounce-back candidates on the reigning Super Bowl champions’ roster, but one could make a case that Fisher belongs in the category. In Week 2 of the 2019 season, he played just four snaps before coming out of the game due to injury and subsequently missed the next eight games. He made his return in Week 11 against the Chargers and had the lowest-graded game of his career (29.5). From there on out, he posted his lowest regular-season PFF grade since his rookie campaign and the lowest PFF WAR of his career. Fisher already got a head start on his bounce-back in the postseason as he produced an 80.5 PFF grade in the Chiefs’ three playoff games.“
Fisher finished the 2019 season with a 64.5 PFF grade, which is markedly lower than the 80.5 PFF grade that he recorded throughout the playoffs. Fisher was the top-graded tackle in the NFL from Week 11 (his return from injury) through Super Bowl LIV with an 83.2 overall grade. That all suggests to me that Fisher was still getting right in his return from injury and could be due for a better regular-season showing in 2020, assuming he stays healthy.
Chiefs Wire spoke to Eric Fisher back in July about a number of different topics, including his dominant performance down the stretch in 2019.
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