A couple things....
1) The Cowboys lead the league on kick returns.....The Cowboys give up an average of just 20.3 yards on kickoffs which is the best in the league, and by a significant amount. The bigger issue are the kicks out of bounds which I'd probably put more on the shoulders of Aubrey.
2) I'd put more blame on Schottenheimer for the blocks than we are....Those blocks were from 59 and 62 yard attempts. Granted you never want a kick to get blocked but reality is longer kicks are blocked with a lot more frequecy due to the angle of the kick. Long kicks are typically straighter kicks lower to the ground to maximize distance. Shorter kicks have more height to not give the defense a chance to get a hand on it.
The kicks out of bounds are a result of the "dirty kicks" that Aubrey is using. We were having him angle them to one side of the field and our opponent got smart and just let them keep bouncing out of bounds if they started bouncing that direction.
I don't know how much of that is on Aubrey and how much is on the ST coordinator telling him that's what he wants him to do. Just like some were blaming Aubrey for kicking that final kickoff against Baltimore out of the end zone. He didn't do that on a whim, but because that's what he was asked to do.
It seemed like against Houston that we had Aubrey bring the dirty kicks closer to the middle of the field instead of trying to pin the returner as far to the outside as possible. That way if they took the wrong bounce, they couldn't just be let go out of bounds.
What he is doing isn't easy, but it's effective if he gets it right. He has to keep it low with spin, but still get it in the landing zone (which he has missed once or twice) and now he has to make sure he doesn't kick his directional kick too far to one side or the returner might let it bounce out of bounds.
However, Aubrey's dirty kicks are a big reason why we lead the league on kick returns. They make the returner have to wait for the bounce (and sometimes have trouble fielding the bounce), which gives the coverage team more time to get past the blocking. We have gotten some nice coverage from Spann-Ford and Luepke as well that is helping with that.
I'm not a fan of Sorenson, because I don't think he had the resume to be made ST coordinator, but we are doing some things better on ST than we were his first year here. We definitely need to fix the FG blocking, though. The problem in this game was Broderick Jones missing his block on Anderson. Not sure I blame that on the ST coordinator.
