Rich Bisaccia said there have been plenty of things the Packers special teams have done well, but he understands it’s the bad things that stand out.
GREEN BAY – Green Bay Packers special-teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia acknowledged that it’s been a rough start for his units this season, but he said he has been self-critical and addressed every shortcoming that has plagued the group.
Bisaccia, who said after last season that he felt he failed Packers coach Matt LaFleur, stressed that special teams are always a work in progress, and what people see now isn’t necessarily what they’ll see as the season goes on.
“I’m certainly self-confident enough to be self-critical,” Bisaccia said during his weekly news conference Oct. 9. “I can promise you that there’s no question that you could ask that’s going to be, like, ‘I’m going to want to fight somebody, something like that.’
“Trust me, I’ve been through worse and I’ve been through a lot better, and I expect, hopefully, not to go through anything worse. But I expect better to come.”
Bisaccia said every mistake is examined, talked about and fixed during the week. He said there have been plenty of things the special teams have done well, but he understands that it’s the bad things that stand out and must be addressed.
“It'd be easy to come in here and cite some of the things that we've done really well,” he said. “I just don't live in that world. I think I do a better job with the players: here's what we've done, here’s what we’ve got to keep building on.
“But really it's kind of incumbent on me, or incumbent on us, to be critical of the other parts that we need to get better at. So, it's not really all gloom and doom. Nothing's going to happen to kill my spirit or attitude. I know we have some issues that we have to correct, as a whole, I mean, we've covered pretty good now, on kickoffs. I think our punter is playing really well.
“We had a (opponent) drive start at the 5, we had a drive start at the 11 in the last game, so I think we have a lot of things to build on.”
Bisaccia addressed several of the unit’s shortcomings during the media session. Here are a few:
Protection on field goals and extra points has been addressed
Bisaccia said there isn’t any secret to what has happened on the two blocked kicks the units have suffered this season, both of which were crushing blows to the Packers’ chances of winning against Cleveland and Dallas.
LaFleur said there will be personnel adjustments, but Bisaccia said it comes down to blocking properly, and if there are players who do it better at one position than at another, the coaches will try to put them there. He said he thinks the failings have been squared away.
“We’d like to think so,” Bisaccia said. “We put a lot of work into it. In a Football 101 class, this is what we start off with. You’re going to teach players what you want and how you want it done, and you’re going to train them to do it in a way in which you taught it to them.
“And you have to trust them to go do it. So, regardless of the fundamentals, regardless of the technique and mechanics of each individual play, there's a point where the execution has got to come to fruition. So, we are in a position to work personnel over and over again in different spots to hopefully get there.”
What he can do to get rookie Savion Willliams to handle kickoffs better
Rookie Savion Williams hasn’t returned kickoffs before and so he doesn’t have a baseline for doing it the old way. The rules changed this year, making returns more complicated. There are judgment decisions that have to be made based on the flight of the ball off the kicker’s foot and Williams is struggling with it.
The new rules say that if the ball lands between the goal-line and the 20-yard line and is downed in the end zone, the ball will come back to the 20-yard line on a touchback. If the ball goes past the goal-line and is downed, the ball goes to the 35-yard line on a touchback.
Coaches came up with what they call “dirty” kickoffs, which don’t travel as high and are aimed to land inside the 10-yard line. The idea is that returners will be forced to back up into the end zone and see whether it takes a clean bounce.
If it does and they field it cleanly, then it’s safe to return it. But if they bobble it or drop it, then they are coached to take a knee in the end zone and accept the touchback to the 20-yard line. By kicking it short, there’s no possibility of the team getting the ball on the 35 on a touchback.
Williams took several 20-yard touchbacks in the Dallas game, in part, because kicker Brandon Aubrey was so precise with his kicks.
“Not only is it new to the league, but certainly new to him, nothing he's ever seen before,” Bisaccia said. “So, we worked really hard on it this past week, and how to handle those dirty kicks and hope you get a Sunday bounce. How to square your nose up and your belly button up on the ball and the decision to make the play.
“So the thing I liked is that he was pretty clear and decisive in the decisions that he made, and you’d certainly like to have him catch it on the bounce, which in the future hopefully he will give us. But that's how we played it in that particular game, and didn't end up with a penalty anywhere, and we ended up back inside the 20. So, it was a positive there to some degree.”
Asked if Williams should have moved up and tried to catch the ball on the fly, Bisaccia said it’s hard to replicate another kicker’s style in practice. So, figuring out where it’s going to be kicked is complicated.
“You're trying to judge the ball, and that's become the hard part,” he said. “It’s a little bit of a line drive, and if it skips in the wrong place … So, I think playing those kicks and getting those sort of kicks in practice has become a little problematic. It’s just going to be a lot of repetitions to make the right decision at the right time.”
Matthew Golden has been told not to put himself in a position to get hit like he did on punt return vs. Dallas
Rookie Matthew Golden thought he was making a nifty move after fielding a punt in the Dallas game. He tried to spin around a defender but would up getting drilled in the chest and slammed to the ground.
The play drew a collective wince from the crowd.
“I think again, it's new for him, right?” Bisaccia said. “He's back there. And we've always talked about, (with) punt returns, it's the decision-making process, when to and when not to, when's it a fair catch. Where am I on the field?
“So it's a new deal for him every day. It's a new deal for him today in practice, it's going to be a new deal for him again in the game. But I think we had a good conversation in the bye week about (it). He said he wants to do it. He's enjoying being back there. He knows it's work. He's really worked hard at it.”
This article originally appeared on Packers News: Rich Bisaccia admits it’s been a rough start for Packers special teams
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