NFL Punters: Is there a difference

Watching the Broncos this season, one of the most oft heard complaints is about Britton Colquitt, the punter.  His average through the first fifteen weeks of the season was at 43.58 yards per punt, and Broncos fans were finding him lacking.  However, it bugged me that almost every qualifying punter in the league was averaging somewhere in the 40 + yards per punt region.  How much of difference can you truly glean from looking at the averages?

Using some data from the NFL Savant website, where they have gathered play by play data for the NFL this season, I pulled out every punt through week 15 and how far it traveled.  From there I computed the descriptives for each punter.  hen, performing an ANOVA test, I was able to conclude that there was in fact a difference amongst punter means.

ANOVA Results
Yardage
	Sum of Squares	df	Mean Square	F	Sig.
Between Groups	6578.996	31	212.226	2.749	.000
Within Groups	164029.928	2125	77.191
Total	170608.924	2156

 I also then tested for a difference in variances, ie whether or not the difference in means could be accounted for by the variance in their punts.  This was not the case though, as the Levene test gave us the inclination that punter to punter variance is the same

Test of Homogeneity of Variances
Yardage
Levene Statistic	df1	df2	Sig.
1.282	31	2125	.138

Followign this gives us that we needed to do some Post Hoc work to determine exactly where each punter falls in the hierarchy of the league.

Tier	Punter	Average
1		48.39
	J.HEKKER	48.39
2		47.93
	M.BOSHER	47.93
3		45.65
	K.HUBER	46
	P.O'DONNELL	43.95
	B.ANGER	45.9
	P.MCAFEE	47.81
	D.COLQUITT	45.71
	B.COLQUITT	43.58
	M.DARR	47.48
	R.QUIGLEY	43.66
	S.KOCH	47.84
	B.PINION	43.96
	M.SCIFRES	44.7
	T.WAY	45.59
	B.KERN	47.17
	C.JONES	45.75
	C.SCHMIDT	45.59
	R.ALLEN	45.65
	S.MARTIN	46.07
	T.MORSTEAD	44.94
	M.KING	44.27
	A.LEE	46.66
	B.NORTMAN	45.83
	D.JONES	47.41
	T.MASTHAY	43.68
	B.WING	44.84
	J.RYAN	45.82
	S.LECHLER	46.93
4		42.27
	D.BUTLER	42.37
	J.BERRY	42.19
	J.SCHUM	42.25
5		42.05
	J.LOCKE	42.05

The above table breaks down the Tukey test results.  There is a decent break down of punters in the league, with there being 5 different groupings.  However, much like place kickers where there are some very good, and some very bad players earning money in the league, a majority of them all fall together, with a bit of luck helping to determine a punt travelling either 45 or 43 yards on a play.

This of course is a fairly rudimentary analysis.  A punt that travels 35 yards might force a fair catch when one that goes 60 outkicks the coverage units and allows a big return.  IT would be interesting to see as well with more detailed data if some punters are sacrificing some distance for more control, like pinning in a returner on the sideline versus kicking it straight down the middle.