Football's advanced analytics community, and yes, such a thing exists,

hates nothing more than what they call the cowardly punt.

Good morning to you.

I'm Dan Kovachovich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports.

You know where this one's headed.

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The cowardly punt is exactly what it sounds like.

It's a coach, well, if you want to borrow somebody else's phrase, living in their fears.

It doesn't just happen to Mike Tomlin.

It happens to a lot of coaches still.

And the pattern that's formed over the years is that it happens most commonly to coaches who've

been around for a long time as opposed to the newer ones who are more likely to look at the

analytics and say, wow, why do I ever punt? Why do I even have a punter on this roster?

Nobody, the NFL has gone quite that far. It has happened in the college ranks and in high schools.

But in the NFL, you still have 32 punters for 32 teams, and you still have more often than not when it's fourth and anything.

The entire punting team will trot out onto the field to dutifully hand the football to the

other team, something that in every other circumstance they really, really hate doing.

And where the analytics become valuable is that they'll take every case, put it into the

big data pile, roll it through the Dr. Seuss-looking machine, and have it spit out what happens when you punt

...