Denver Broncos punter Jeremy Crawshaw was decent but not great as a rookie punter in the NFL. As I do at the end of every season, I do a deep dive into punting that is more thorough than any other site.
At the end of the day, the job of the punter is to maximize field position for the team. So the best way to measure the performance of a punter is to determine how well the punter did at winning the field position game for their team.
I break up punts into two groups, long-field punts (from the team’s
1-34 yard line) and short-field punts from the 35 on. On short-field punts the punter can just try to kick the ball as far as possible without too much worry of a touchback (although they can outkick the coverage). On short-field punts, hangtime and accuracy are much more critical for pinning the opponent inside the 10 or the 20. While many sites have starting tracking punts downed inside the 20, I also track punts downed inside the 10. No other site has that.
Last year I came up a scoring system for punts downed inside the 10. A punt downed at the 10 gets 1 point, at the 9 gets 2 points, and so on. While Crawshaw got 14 downed inside the 10, 6 of those were downed at the 10 and only 3 were inside the 5.
The punter for the Texans, Tommy Townsend, (and the Texans punt coverage team) was a step above every other punt unit in the league at pinning teams inside the 10 and the 5. They had 10 punts downed inside the 5. The Eagles punter, Braden Mann, had only one downed inside the five, and only 6 downed inside the 10. So he was the worst precision punter by this metric.
Another way to measure precision punting is to take percentage of punts downed inside the 10 and subtract percentage of punts that end as touchbacks. The rationale is that precision means being able to keep the ball inside the 10, while keeping it out of the endzone. Some of this is a function of the punt coverage team. I call this the precision punt performance (PPP)
The best PPP was Jack Fox of the Lions. He got 26.8% of his punts downed inside the 10 with only 3.6% of his punts ending as touchbacks for a PPP of 23.2%. Crawshaw was 22nd with a PPP of 6.7%. Braden Mann of the Eagles was the worst with a PPP of negative 2.8%. Former Bronco punter, Sam Martin, was the second best in PPP with a value of 19.6%. He was punting for the Panthers this season.
In terms of of overall punt % (how much of the possible yards did Crawshaw “gain” for the Broncos), Jeremy was 19th at 74.6%. As his average punt %. To give you an example of how this is calculated let’s look at one punt by Jeremy this season.
Against the Eagles, on 4th and 21 from the -47, Jeremy punted the ball 37 yards where it was fair caught at the 10. The potential best outcome would have been a ball downed at the 1 (52 yard punt). So Crawshaw got 37 of 52 potential yards on that punt (71%). A blocked punt or a long return can lead to a negative punt %. Crawshaw did not have any punts blocked this season.
In terms of punt% Bryan Anger, the punter for the Cowboys, was the best punter in the league at 79.0% while Corey Bojorquez was the worst at 67.8%.
For punters who are consistent their average is going to be close to the summed net/potential, while punters who are inconsistent will have a large difference between their summed net divided summed potential yards.
The most consistent punter was Austin McNamara. He was consistently average. The least consistent was Ethan Evans of the Rams.
Here are Crawshaw’s ranks in various punting metrics:
- Long field punt % = 17th
- Short field punt % = 15th
- Hangtime – 24th
- Punt percentage – 19th
- PPP – 22nd
- Net/Potential – 15th
- Consistency – 12th
- Gross average – 14th
- in 10% – 14th
- in 20% – 17th
- TB% – 29th
- FC% – 13th
- RET% – 6th
The only metric where he was in the top 10 was in return percentage where he was 6th at 38.7%.
Of the three former Bronco punters still in the NFL, Crawshaw was better than Corliss Waitman and Riley Dixon in most metrics and comparable to Sam Martin in most.
Presumably, Crawshaw should improve next season, but it would be great for him to have a playoff like Britton Colquitt did in the 2015/6 run to Super Bowl 50. He was a weapon for the Broncos during that Super Bowl run. It would be great for Crawshaw to be a weapon for the Broncos in these playoffs. Below are the ratings on long field punts for 2025
Following are the short field punt percentages for 2025
