FanPost

Moorman vs. Powell

Hello everyone. It seems like everyone is as shocked as I am that Brian Moorman was released. He has been my favorite player on the Bills for at least 6 or 7 years (mainly because no one else was good at the time). I had to try to rationalize to myself why the Bills could cut Moorman, so I tried to look at some of the stats. My amateur analysis is after the jump.

First up: the Bills punting stats (ESPN keeps track as a team, but since Moorman has been the only punter for the Bills this year these numbers are appropriate).

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Long

Avg Yds

Net

w/ 20

Avg Ret

Stat

66

45.5

34

2

21.5

Rank

4th

21st

31st

29th

29th

So while Moorman has the 4th longest punt of the season, we're in the bottom third for all the other important categories. This obviously is not good. Granted this last week against Cleveland hurt Moorman's stats because he was kicking out of bounds to avoid Cribbs, but they usually went a long way out instead of landing just outside for maximum yardage.

Now lets take a look at the preseason stats for Moorman and Powell, the thing I was most curious about:

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Name

Punts

Yards

Avg

TB

w/ 20

Long

Moorman

14

591

42.2

0

8

50

Powell

14

627

44.8

0

5

55

This was surprising to me. I didn't watch much of the preseason aside from the Steeler game which I attended, but from the stats it appears Powell and Moorman were roughly equal. It looks like Powell was slightly better at getting distance on his punts (average and long), but did not get as many punts within the 20, whoever that might have been due to the team giving him lots of room to punt because it was struggling to move down the field.

All in all, I'm sad to see Moorman go, but I can see why the Bills decided to shake things up. Let's just hope rookie mistakes don't come back to bite us at some point this season.

Just another great fan opinion shared on the pages of BuffaloRumblings.com.