Dustin Colquitt appears to be slipping a bit on the surface. The veteran punter for the Kansas City Chiefs, and arguably the second greatest Tennessee football punter ever, is outside of the Top 20 in yards per punt at 44.9, and he’s also outside of the Top 20 in number of punts inside the 20-yard line with just 21.
At age 36, that was to be expected. However, there’s a caveat to all of this. Colquitt was playing in an offense led by MVP candidate Patrick Mahomes, who threw 50 touchdowns this year, so he only punted 45 times, a very small amount of times.
When you factor that in, 21 punts inside the 20-yard line is incredibly impressive. Go even deeper, and you’ll realize that with that offense, under the leadership of Andy Reid, he was going to have lots of shorter punts than other punters. So that was going to bring down his average.
Simply put, if Colquitt played for mediocre offenses, his numbers would be way better. So we are actually being a bit unfair to say he appears to be slipping. And considering his age, there’s nothing to be ashamed of anyway. Colquitt is still a key player for the Chiefs, and his leg will become more valuable in the playoffs.