The Green Bay Packers haven’t done crap in the return game this year, but that’s not the fault of Jeremy Ross, according to special teams coach Shawn Slocum.
Overall, the Packers have averaged just 12.8 yards per kick return, while Ross is averaging 13.5 on his four returns. Randall Cobb took the other one. That’s mostly the fault of the guys in front of the returner, Slocum says.
“We’ve had three plays,” Slocum said. “Two of them, the ball was kicked away from where we had the play called. One of them, we missed a block on. The production is unacceptable. We need to have a good week this week and we’ll need to have some productive returns.”
“The three (poor) kickoff returns that we’ve had, we’ve really had three different problems,” Slocum said. “One of them, we had a good kick and a good setup and we missed the block and that hurt us; that was the second one in the San Francisco game.”
On punt returns, Ross is averaging 10 yards on two returns.
This is all in stark contrast to the 28.7 he averaged on kicks and 25.8 he averaged on punts, last season. Obviously the guy has the ability, but when you remake your special teams every season and have Shawn Slocum as your coach, these are the results you get sometimes.
The good news is, it can’t get much worse and we can’t see the Packers risking Cobb behind a bunch of guys who can’t block.