Returner Jobs Have Apparently Been Decided
Barring injury, it appears that Micah Hyde will be the Green Bay Packers primary punt returner and rookie Ty Montgomery will be the team’s primary kick returner in 2015.
Although coach Mike McCarthy hasn’t made anything official, Jason Wilde has suggested special teams coach Ron Zook alluded to that hierarchy on Wednesday. And that really should be no surprise.
Yes, Randall Cobb did express interest in returning punts once again, but, as we’ve detailed, Hyde is the much better option. He has three punt returns for touchdowns in the past two seasons and a substantially higher career average than Cobb.
As for kicks, it has seemed obvious since the Packers selected Montgomery in the third round that he would be the kick return guy. He averaged 27.4 per return during his career at Stanford and took three to the house.
The Packers were a disaster in that department in 2014, when they were, for whatever reason, determined that third-string running back DuJuan Harris was a kick returner. Turns out, he wasn’t and the coaching staff eventually had to replace him with Cobb.
While Cobb has always been a dynamic kick returner, you’ve got Montgomery now. So why not use him?
The only way we could see this changing is if Montgomery suddenly gets the fumblitis when preseason play begins.
It’s about time we got a good kickoff returner that isn’t a starter (yet) on Off. or Def. Furthermore I hope the defense improves enough to cut the number of kick return plays by at least 25% from 2014
Montgomery is a very smooth and fluid kick returner. No herky-jerky trying to juke ’em stuff. Dude is SMOOOOOOOOVE!