I hope Skylar Green doesn't suit this week

[Stautner]

He's never dove to field a punt. He picked up one punt that hit the ground, yes, but he seemed to do just fine with it. I haven't seen him fail to call fair catch. He was called on the fair catch penalty, though, but that was probably just a nerves/rookie mistake.

You must have chosen punts to take bathroom breaks or make beer runs.

I believe it was the second punt where Green dove. Just to be clear, I'm not talking about an all out fully extended dive, but it was a running, falling foward onto his face catch with players from both teams all around.

And he did field one punt without fair catching and was hit immediately - very risky.

As for the one he fielded on the bounce, he did several things wrong. First, Parcells publically said that the reason the ball hit the ground at all was that Green set up WAY too deep - even joking that he thought Green was going to back up all the way to Austin. Then, the bounce was low, hard and tightly spinning - a damn tough ball to field on the bounce, and again, very risky. Then, of course, was the fact that he tried to run after calling for a fair catch.

None of this adds up to giving anyone a warm fuzzy feeling.

But I will give him the benefit of the doubt since it was his first NFL game - lets hope the decisions making improves and he goes on from here to be the punt returner we need.

 

[ghst187]

I'll map each one out for you.

1. Low and short. Horrible punt. Green runs up and catches it on a one hop. Runs for 5 yards and is tackled. Green ends up getting a penalty for calling fair catch.

2. Extremely high and extremely short. Green has to run up and catch it. Stumbles forward after catching it. There were Cowboys all around (that's how short it was) so if he doesn't catch it there's a good chance it bounces and hits one of the players causing a live ball.

3. High and short punt. Green catches solidly without problem. Three Texans are standing right in front of him waiting to catch (no opportunity for return).

4. Touchback.

5. High and short punt. Catches without a problem. Tackled immediately. No room to run.

6. Average kick. Catches without a problem. Has room to run, but calls fair catch.

Basically, he had one returnable kick (the last one). It's debateable whether or not he should have called fair catch, but I'll give you that one. The only times he looked awkward were with extremely, EXTREMELY short and high kicks. He didn't stumble on any, but he was running forward while catching 2 because they were abnormally short kicks.

At the end of the day you can mark him up for two mistakes. Perhaps you could call the debateable fair catches discussed above a mistake. The other would obviously be the fair catch penalty. Being his first regular season game, I'll give him some slack for that one.

thanks but I'm telling you from a field-level view he looked bad and uncomfortable fielding all of them. Obviously the punts had something to do with it but his footwork didn't look good. Everyone in my section was scared to death every punt that he was going to drop or fumble one. We were holding our breath everytime.
If you watch Crayton or Newman field a punt, it looks very natural and fluid. Even in warm-ups Green didn't look real comfortable fielding punts.
I know Green did a good job of it in college, I saw him play a ton of times.
I'd like to see him get a little more room next game and see how he does.
I agree the punts hamstrung him but you won't convince me he looked good against Houston, I was sitting about 10-15 yards at almost field-level from several of them.

 

[Doomsday]

I personally would like to see Newman back there but it doesnt look like that is going to happen on a regular basis, so I am all for Skyler Green getting a shot. Hopefully he can make a play or 2 back there and create a spark for the offense.

 

[chargrove]

Newman is our best punt returner. Period.

Skyler Green may have been good at LSU, but that looks to have been a few peanut butter/jelly sammiches ago, based on his, uh, physique.