Donohue, Logan - special teams problems

Hang time.

Hang time allows the coverage to get to the ball.

I agree he needs to work on placement… but I have not seen too many bad punts from Donahue.

On the KR/PR…. I agree… Change it up! Maybe the other team will kick the ball a different way? Who knows.
Try a reverse!… put 2 PRs back…. Something… But I agree the KR/PR have been a bit…. Boring.

His average per punt is in the lower half of the league, but also 8th in the league in punts inside the 20, 6th in the league in punts inside the 10 yard line. All of this is as a rookie too.

Also, Stefan Logan, even with so many touchbacks, is 8th in league in kick return average. He’s returned 11 kicks so far in the season, which is a bit low, but I would much rather take the ball at the twenty and let the offense do its thing than a returner who tires to make a play and ends up giving the offense a long field to begin a drive. Now, he is near the bottom of the league in punt return average, so maybe we can make a change there, but I doubt the Lions will. Logan is a career returner who knows what he’s doing. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to put in a starting receiver in that role.

Titis Young. I just think we need to change. No offense to anybody. No need to insult. Just an opinion!

Rookie punter who’s shown a lot of flashes – I like him

Logan has proved to be a great option, just give him some more opportunities.

he is in the top 10 without getting that one long return in. He actually has the shortest “long return” of anybody in the top 10. Which says to me the guy is very consistent. Factor out some of the other returners one big run, and their averages are pretty average.

Give me the consistent returner every time.

and I also don’t believe if he wasn’t instructed to play conservatively like this they’d be tearing him a new one over it. Perhaps he’s carried out the direction to a fault however, but it seems to be the intention overall. As JC points out, when he is returning he’s been fairly consistent.

As for Donahue, i’m not overly impressed but at this point the only formalized opinion I have on him is there’s going to be at least 2 punters in camp next spring. I suspect he’ll be fine tho.

He’s a rookie, and rookies get a free pass. He’ll get better just because that kid has a hell of a leg.

I wish he had a little more distance on his punts but he is more of a height guy. We have faced some dangerous returners and I for one haven’t seen our rookie punter put us in a situation where I said to myself, “WTF is he doing?”

He plays Lions football, aka smart football. He is not a flashy punter (do they have those) by any means but he appears to be getting the job done. Plenty of upside with this kid.

As for Logan I too have been disappointed this year. But again he is doing a solid job and not making many mistakes. He deserves a roster spot and I would like to see him brought in for 2-4 touches on offense per game.

Fist let’s talk about Stefan Logan. Yes, he has made a few fair catches that he could have returned and all of a sudden we have people that want to toss him under the bus? Get the f**k real! Logan himself realized that he had called some bad fair catches. That is why he hit himself in the helmet after one of them. You are not breaking any news that Logan doesn’t know himself. After that one really bad fair catch, he returned almost everything. So he already addressed it and people need to BACK THE FUCK OFF and see what he does with it.

As for his fair catches, Jim Schwartz also addressed that. He pointed out that when the Lions deferred the kickoff they did that so that the receivers would not be looking back into the sun early in the game. He also pointed out that making that decision also forced Logan to look into the sun while making his returns. He felt that two of the fair catches by Logan were strictly because he had trouble picking up the ball out of the sun.

On another fair catch, Schwartz said that Logan saw a player flash near him out of the corner of his eye and he mistook them for a Denver player when it was actually a Lion. Did you expect Logan to take his eyes off the ball to make sure of that? People need to get it into their head that you don’t know what is going on all the time. If Schwartz is unhappy with Logan then he has alternatives on the roster. Until he does, you can be assured that the coaches feel that Logan is the best return man we have. Live with it.

The complaints about Donahue are a bit more based in truth, but they are still much too premature. Donahue has not been all that bad. Yes, he has made a few mistakes, but he is a rookie for heaven’s sake. Why are people so quick to toss people under the bus on this site?

Donahue was selected over Nick Harris because he has a better hang time on his punts. The numbers that Donahue is putting up are very comparable to what Nick Harris did the last couple of seasons. If people are getting all flustered about net yardage, they also need to realize that is a function of the ENTIRE return team and not just Donahue. I have seen some horrible coverage on punts and it was not Donahue’s fault when people miss tackles and cannot get off blocks.

Give the kid a chance to see what he can become and don’t be so quick to toss away players because you are impatient and foolish.