Quote:“Portland Pythons safety and punt returner, Shannon Hobbs, doesn’t have any ridiculous goals for the season; he just wants to be the best punt returner in the league his rookie year. He’s got the wheels to do it, too, going into week one as one of the fastest guys in the league. He hopes to break some games wide open with big returns giving his offense a short field to work with. It is an often overlooked aspect of games but Hobbs has made it his mission to focus on the return game as a way to make him more valuable to his team.
As for the team, I expect the Pythons to battle for a top spot in the league. They had one of the best pass defenses in the league last season but it did not equate to a lot of wins for them, or not as many as they had hoped anyway. This season, they added new faces to that pass defense and can hopefully get it done on offense to put more points on the board and get a few more games in the win column. I think we can get it done on defense so it would be up to our offense to help out the defense. And as I said, an improved special teams can go a long way towards getting some more wins.”
Those were my predictions from the previous PT. Now, I would argue that Hobbs was the best punt returner based on his average yards per return and the fact that he was one of just two returners with a punt return touchdown. However, he never got the opportunity to return a kick, which kind of puts a kink in his plans to be the best returner. That being said, he was probably the best rookie returner in the league and with still two games to go in the year, he could improve upon that standing with a solid couple of games.
And as for the team expectations, we definitely fell short as the Pythons ended up as the worst passing defense in the league allowing 221.6 passing yards per game, a stat I definitely did not expect to see. Despite that, they are the best scoring defense in the entire league allowing just 17.9 points per game. While we did get some more wins, I’m not sure I was right on my expectations. I said we would need the offense to help out the defense but I think this was a case of the offense having to pick up the defense’s slack, big time.
All in all, I wasn’t that far off in my expectations, results were the same, it was just a different way to get there.
