After reuniting with NU’s Busch, NFL vet Sam Koch lends helping foot to Husker punters | Football

“If you can do that at the college level and get the ball down on the ground and get it to roll, you can have a huge net day in the punting game, just by getting it on the ground and getting the gunners and punt team running down there.”

Nebraska is looking for any way to find improvement in punting, in particular, and across the board in special teams. The Huskers shuffled their coaching responsibilities again this offseason as head coach Scott Frost looks for answers in what has been a consistent trouble spot the past three years.

In 2020, for example, Nebraska finished No. 13 in the Big Ten and No. 107 nationally in net field position, according to Football Outsiders data. NU’s starting field position was, on average, 4.7 yards worse than its opponent.

“The last time I saw in (NFL) analytics, a punt to the 13 compared with a punt to the 18 might be the difference from a 13% chance of scoring for the opposing team to a 28% chance of scoring,” Koch said.

“The difference in 5 yards is huge in the course of the game.”

He had a pretty simple explanation for why the Huskers were strong on special teams when he was in school and why the Ravens consistently rank among the NFL’s best outfits.

“A lot of it had to do with Bill Busch, Jeff Jamrog, Scott Downing, those types of guys creating the atmosphere,” Koch said. “Then we had coaches out there scouting and bringing in guys like Brandon Rigoni, who just had the mentality of a special teamer. With that, the focus that we put on it at that time was like, we had a lot of guys on the team and we focused on being the best special teams we could be. It’s much like the way we are here (in Baltimore) in the NFL. We put so much of an emphasis on it that there’s a reason why we’ve been at the top of the league for the last 10 or 11 years, every year.