Charlton questions and ST's needed improvement

[RenoCarolina]

With all the angst over our FG kicker I have kind of forgotten about Charlton.

After a pretty good rookie season (won NFC ST player of the week last year against WFT)...  I just assumed he would keep getting better.  But his kicks are consistently underwhelming so far.  Have I missed any news about him?

In 2020 he averaged 46.3 with a long of 67.

Thru three games he is averaging 38.2 with a long of 54

Against the Texans he had 3 punts with a long of only 42??

Some of that is field position and judging punters is a lot of math that makes me sleepy.  But...I hope I can start feeling better about our punter and our ST in general soon.

[t96]

I wonder if he's hurt or something. Just such a drastic difference this year and it's really hurting the team...

[TheSpecialJuan]

He’s been terrible 

[therealmjl]

He's been hot garbage this year

[sharkkiller]

Punting from inside the 50 tends to hurt your punting average, but he has not been as good as last year for sure.

[TylerDurden]

Yeah, he has spanked a ton of them this year.  He's got to turn it around quick or I suspect we will have a new punter in here rather quickly.

[Chaos]

The one punt from the 33 killed his average for the season

[Bartin]

Possible that part of it could be coaching, i.e. let’s sacrifice 5 yards to ensure we don’t don’t give up a big return

Also, small sample size and we have punted on some short fields. Gonna wait a few weeks before panicking.

[Snake]

ST at some point this year will lose us a game or two. It's been hot garbage all around. 

[dpm0409]

Less concerned about his overall average b/c as it's already been said multiple times, field position is a big factor there.  However, when we have had to punt deeper in our own territory, he's been terrible.

[LinvilleGorge]

2 hours ago, t96 said:

I wonder if he's hurt or something. Just such a drastic difference this year and it's really hurting the team...

There's a drastic difference since preseason. He looked phenomenal in the preseason then a terrible switch got flipped when the regular season got here.

[Catsfan69]

He has sucked this year.

[BrianS]

It appears that field position doesn't hold up very well as an excuse / reason for the poor performance.

This season, he's punted 10 times when the line of scrimmage has been on the Carolina side of the 50.  Those 10 punts average 40.6 yards.   Which *still* ranks him last in the NFL in punting average.

As an interesting aside, that dude we got rid of a few years back, Andy Lee?  Still punting.  Averaging 51.5 per kick this year.

[Bartin]

19 minutes ago, BrianS said:

It appears that field position doesn't hold up very well as an excuse / reason for the poor performance.

This season, he's punted 10 times when the line of scrimmage has been on the Carolina side of the 50.  Those 10 punts average 40.6 yards.   Which *still* ranks him last in the NFL in punting average.

As an interesting aside, that dude we got rid of a few years back, Andy Lee?  Still punting.  Averaging 51.5 per kick this year.

I almost have to believe some of this is coaching because they don't want him to outkick the coverage and give up a big return. You don't just lose that much distance without some kind of catastrophic injury and we also haven't brought any punters in for workouts which indicates the staff doesn't see a problem and I have to imagine being last by far would normally be seen as a cause for concern. Swapping out the punter is like one of the easiest things to do in the NFL personnel wise. Further evidence is that we traded for that Buffalo DE right before the regular season and his biggest asset is supposedly covering on ST.