Special teams were a major contributing factor in the Cleveland Browns struggles in the Hue Jackson era. From shoddy coverage to uncoordinated blocking and poor choices on returns, too many games saw too many yards surrendered by the kick and punt teams.
The units perked up last year once Jackson was fired, and that generally carried over to the new year under Freddie Kitchens in Week 1.
Other than a couple of penalties and an aesthetically awful but effective first punt from Jamie Gillan, the kicking and coverage units were strong.
“I thought our coverage units were outstanding,” Kitchens said. “You are right, we had two penalties. One of them was a defensive holding on Greedy (Williams) outside and then the other one was an illegal double team block.”
A missed extra point is a major sore thumb for rookie kicker Austin Seibert, unfortunately. However, Kitchens seemed pleased with the rookie punter, Gillan.
“I was pleased with the effort, the attention to detail and the ability to go down a make a play. They started several drives – four drives, I think – inside the 20 and three inside the 10 or something like that. Maybe I got my numbers backwards, but they were inside the 20 four times during the course of the game. Starting after (Gillan’s) first punt that he got off was not the best punt but he got a good roll out of it. Then after that, he had three punts with over five seconds hang time. You do a good job of doing that and you can limit the amount of return yards that they have.”
The “Scottish Hammer” averaged 46.6 yards on his five punts and pinned three of them inside the Titans’ 20-yard line. Tennessee did not even attempt a single punt return in the game.
