News: DC: Mailbag: Who Will Return Punts? 4-3 Or 3-4?

[NewsBot]

Who do you guys see taking over return duties in the upcoming season?

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[LACowboysFan1]

We see all the time the comment "well I don't want to risk my top receiver/defensive back/etc. getting hurt returning punts".

But that just seldom happens, if for no other reason than the fact that there are so few returns, most are fair catches. Not a single returner averaged 2 per game. Not one. A third of teams returned an average of 1 per game.
And really returning punts is no longer much of the NFL game, at least as far as scoring is concerned, only 7 tds last year on punt returns, figuring an average of 1.5 a game, and 272 regular season games, that's 408 returns so less than 2% were returned for touchdowns. And when's the last time we saw a returner hurt during the return? I can't recall a single one. That's due a lot to the rules changes - targeting, etc.

So put whoever you want back there to return punts, it's extremely unlikely to get a player hurt, and not much more likely to result in a score....