Could Pat O’Donnell’s holding be contributing to the Chicago Bears’ issues at kicker?
As the Chicago Bears continue to fill out the roster, Ryan Pace made the decision to bring back Pat O’Donnell to continue to punt for the franchise.
O’Donnell isn’t spectacular, but is a solid punter and Pace chose to go with the punter he knows (at a clip of $2 million per year for two years) rather than risk inviting a couple of UDFAs to camp and let them battle it out.
While O’Donnell the punter is fine, there was a point brought up on Twitter after Adam Schefter announced the O’Donnell signing that gets you wondering.
Not a big fan of the #Bears re-signing Pat O'Donnell. Inconsistent and seems to have his worst punts at the wrong time. All of that on top of the fact that he's been the holder for the last 5 years, where the team's kickers have had 1 year of (80%) or better on FGs.
— Aaron Leming (@AaronLemingNFL) March 19, 2019
Let’s put the punting aspect aside for O’Donnell (POD) and strictly look at the point Aaron Leming brought up about holding. The idea seems unfair to saddle a holder with the struggles of a kicker, but let’s take a deeper statistical dive to see if there is any validity to that.
Over POD’s time as a holder, the Bears have had three kickers. Robbie Gould, Connor Barth and Cody Parkey. Gould has been a model of consistency, but two of the worst three seasons of his career were with O’Donnell. Gould is 316 for 357 in his career when O’Donnell isn’t holding (88.5%) and hits only 82.3% (42 for 51) when he kicked with POD.
For Connor Barth, he was a career 84.8% kicker without POD (139 out of 164) and a career 74.3% with POD (29 for 39). As for Parkey, his career prior to last year was 76 for 88 for an 86.4% rate, but last year with O’Donnell, his success rate fell to 76.7%.
That’s an alarming trend right out of the gate. Those three kickers are a combined 531 for 609 in their careers without POD, hitting 87.2% of their attempts. With him, they are 94 for 120 which equates to 78.3%.
That’s a net of -8.9% with O’Donnell vs without him. That number jumps off the page. But what about the difficulty about kicking in Soldier Field? That was my thoughts exactly, it’s the drop in success at Soldier Field that must be the problem.
Let’s dig deeper.
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So while POD’s kickers hit 78.3% of their kicks with half coming at Soldier Field and half coming at other venues, the opponents in those same games and thus, same conditions, hit 144 of 160 field goals for a success rate of 90.0%.
Diving deeper, let’s look at the splits over that time. POD kickers had an 81.8% success rate at home and a 75% success rate at home. Chicago Bears’ opponents had a 92.5% success rate on the road and an 87.5% success rate at home.
Let me repeat that, opposing kickers had an 87.5% success rate at Soldier Field.
So Bears’ opponents are hitting 90% of their kicks and 87.5% at Soldier Field and Bears kickers with O’Donnell are hitting 78.3% of field goals and 75% at Soldier Field.
Those same kickers that are far below what Bears’ opponents are accomplishing with field goal kicking are hitting 87.2% without O’Donnell, just a touch below the 90% success rate opponents have had.
The numbers show that the three kickers the Bears have had are roughly equal to Bears’ kicking opponents when they don’t have O’Donnell holding for them, but their averages drop roughly 10% when O’Donnell is holding.
Does that mean O’Donnell is to blame? Not necessarily. There are many factors that play into this, but when you boil it down, the argument could be made that O’Donnell is an issue.
Patrick Mannelly retired in 2013 and O’Donnell arrived in 2014. Losing an excellent long snapper could play into it, but what we know is that the Bears kicking game over the last five years has seen different head coaches, different special teams coaches, different kickers and different long snappers. The one consistent has been O’Donnell.
There is no way of knowing if the holder is at fault, but you cannot argue against the statistics. Bears kickers perform worse when O’Donnell holds for them. It’s a trend that Ryan Pace and the front office better have examined and be confident that, despite a large sample size, this is somehow a statistical anomaly and not the fault of the holder.
Otherwise, if there is truly a correlation between these numbers and Pat O’Donnell, it doesn’t matter who is kicking for the Bears in 2019, they won’t be performing as well as anyone hopes.