Tampa Bay Buccaneers Should Cut Michael Koenen

Kim Klement - USA TODAY Sports
Kim Klement – USA TODAY Sports

As teams are making the final preparations for training camps they are certainly thinking of players who may not make their final 53-man roster. For the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, I can think of one player in particular who shouldn’t be on the team come Week 1, and that player is punter Michael Koenen. After signing a six-year, $19.5 million contract with the Bucs in 2011, Koenen has not exactly performed like he has been paid.

Koenen was last in the NFL in 2014 with an average of 40.4 yards per punt. He ranked 29th in net punting average with 37.1 yards per punt, just 0.6 yards ahead of the league-worst Brad Nortman of the Carolina Panthers. Koenen also ranked 31st in the league with only 17 punts inside the 20-yard line. Basically, any statistic puts the Bucs punter as one of the worst in the NFL.

You could say that punting isn’t always about averages because so much of it depends on field position and game situations, but those excuses don’t fly with Koenen. Anybody who watched the Bucs play last year knows that Koenen was a liability on special teams. So often his punts would fly off the side of his foot and go out of bounds many yards before intended. I believe he may have been instructed to force more fair catches, but I can’t imagine his performance was applauded. Koenen also handled kickoff duties. And while he forced touchbacks on almost 45 percent of his kickoffs, that ranked just 22nd in the NFL.

The worst part about Koenen is that he is being compensated like one of the league’s best punters. According to Spotrac, the 34-year-old has a $3.25 million cap hit this year and in 2016. That cap hit would be sixth-highest among punters in 2015. Having already received all of his guaranteed money, the Bucs could release Koenen at any time without suffering any cap consequences. Why the team hasn’t already done this is a mystery to me.

There is a fix, though! Also on the roster right now is former Cleveland Browns punter Spencer Lanning. If you have seen Antonio Brown’s punter-kick play, then you have seen Lanning. The Bucs claimed him off waivers in June, and he would have a cap hit of $585,000 if he were to make the team this year. And guess what? Lanning was a better punter than Koenen last year in each of the three categories I mentioned earlier. Lanning would probably only be a league-average punter at best, but that’s better than what could be expected of Koenen. This seems easy: lower cap hit and better performance. Cut Koenen.

Want one more reason to choose Lanning over Koenen? Lanning would be wearing No. 5, so Bucs fans could have a use for their old Josh Freeman jerseys after all!

David Rumsey is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Beat Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter (@David_Bucs) for more Bucs’ news and analysis.

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