During his tenure at Oregon, former head coach Mike Bellotti coined what became a relatively popular refrain when it came to imploring members of the Ducks’ special teams units.

“SPECIAL TEAMS: BE SPECIAL!”

However, beyond kicker Aidan Schneider, who graduated as one of the best kickers in school history at the end of last season, the Ducks have been decidedly lackluster in the special teams department in recent years.

According to Football Outsiders’ FEI ratings, Oregon ranked 74th nationally in overall special teams efficiency in 2017.

FEI is a college football rating system based on opponent-adjusted drive efficiency, which simply means things like first-half clock-kills and end-of-game garbage-time drives and scores are filtered out of any calculations.

The special teams efficiency component is based off an average value generated per possession by a team’s non-offensive and non-defensive units (aka, special teams in human language).

Oregon’s unremarkable place in the landscape of this overall special teams metric had much to do with their anemic showing in three particular categories: kickoff return efficiency (an average value generated per kickoff based on field position at the conclusion of the play), punt efficiency (an average value generated per punt based on the punt team’s original field position and field position at the end of the play), and defensive field position (the average starting field position of an opponent’s offensive possession measured in terms of yards from the end zone).

Per Football Outsiders, the Ducks ranked 95th, 83rd, and 109th in these respective categories. In essence, the Ducks were on the losing end of the field position battle all too often last season.

Gone is last season’s special teams coordinator Raymond Woodie, who followed Willie Taggart to Tallahassee when Taggart left Oregon to take the Florida State job this past December. In his place is Bobby Williams, a former head coach at Michigan State (’99-’02), who spent the last 10 years as an assistant to Nick Saban at Alabama.

Today, we take a position-by-position look at the Oregon special teams and determine whether Williams has the personnel to drastically improve the Ducks’ performance on this side of the ball in 2018.

Kicker:

Has Oregon improved?: Not to our knowledge. No disrespect to Adam Stack, who enters his sophomore season as the Ducks’ presumed placekicker following the departure of Schneider, but he’ll have to have a near flawless season in order to make Oregon fans forget about Schneider’s steady foot. For his career, Schneider connected on 85 percent of his field goal attempts and over 98 percent of his extra point attempts – numbers that put him in rarefied air historically amongst kickers at the University of Oregon. Stack, a Honolulu (Hawaii) native, arrived in Eugene last summer as one of the top prep kickers in the country, but has yet to put his leg to the test when it comes to attempting field goals.

Punter:

Has Oregon improved?: It’s hard to say. While Stack didn’t get a chance to prove himself as Oregon’s field goal kicker, he did receive ample opportunity to establish himself as the Ducks’ punter. Unfortunately, the fruits of his labor as a true freshman weren’t all that impressive. Stack averaged 38.4 yards per punt in 2017, which ranked him 10th amongst Pac-12 punters. He’s anticipated to face stiff competition from redshirt junior walk-on Blake Maimone, and newly added true freshman Tom Snee. Of the two, Snee is the most intriguing challenger for the job entering 2018. A native of Australia, Snee will arrive in Eugene later this summer with the reputation of having a strong, precise leg.

Kickoff Return:

Has Oregon improved?: Much of that will depend on Williams’ ability to make the proper adjustments that lead to more creases and lanes for the Oregon return men to run through. Of those nifty factoids recited earlier in this piece, Oregon’s kickoff return efficiency ranked towards the bottom of the national rankings. In fact, the only real moment of note that came from the Ducks’ kickoff return team in 2017 came in the season opener against Southern Utah on the game’s opening kickoff. The return man on that play, Tony Brooks-James, figures to reprise his role as a return specialist along with a host of others.

Punt Return:

Has Oregon improved?: Can anyone recall anything that happened when Oregon was set to return a punt last season? With that, it’s difficult to say whether any improvement has been made, as there was little to evaluate last season. In total, the Ducks only returned 18 punts as a team last season, averaging 6.4 yards per return. Junior Dillon Mitchell fielded the most punts in 2017, but only tallied 89 return yards on 11 returns. He’s expected to appear in that role once again, but keep tabs on sophomore Jaylon Redd, who could also factor in on kickoff returns.

Have the Ducks improved on offense? Read HERE!

Have the Ducks improved on defense? Read HERE!