The 5 O’Clock Club: Commanders special teams excellence in 2024

It’s 5 o’clock somewhere…

The 5 o’clock club is published from time to time during the season, and aims to provide a forum for reader-driven discussion at a time of day when there isn’t much NFL news being published. Feel free to introduce topics that interest you in the comments below.

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I enjoyed watching the several player media sessions from Tuesday, and they prompted thoughts on several different fronts.

One of the most intriguing was the press conference with special teams ace Nick Bellore, whose word of the day was “awesome”. At one point, Nick actually used ‘awesome’ three times in a single sentence, which I found awe-inspiring. My total unofficial superlative count for Bellore’s nearly 8-minute press conference is:

• amazing 1
• awesome 6

One of the first things that came to my mind was the fact that Bellore and Jeremy Reaves are together on the same team. Bellore made the Pro Bowl as a special teams player in 2020 and 2023; Reaves was both a Pro Bowler and All Pro in 2022.

Neither player made the Pro Bowl last year (2024) despite the fact that they ranked 1st & 2nd in special teams tackles for the season. Think about that for a minute: playing together on the same team, Bellore led the league with 24 ST tackles while Reaves was right behind him with 21, yet neither achieved pro bowl honors.

Here’s Nick Bellore speaking about Jeremy Reaves:

“It was great to have kind of like a partner out there on special teams. I mean, we have a long list of great guys. With Reavo, specifically, who can run and hit and do everything that he can do, it’s awesome to watch him play and play alongside of him.”

But Reavo and Bellore weren’t the only guys contributing to special teams tackles. Equally amazing and awesome is the fact that Mykal Walker ranked 5th in the league in ST tackles while Jeremy Chinn and Percy Butler were tied for 7th. In other words, 5 of the 8 leading special teams tacklers in the NFL played for the Commanders last season.

How is that possible?

Well, for one thing, with one of the most prolific scoring offenses in the NFL last year, Washington had the 5th-most kickoffs in the league at 102 (only 5 teams had more than 100 kickoffs for the season).

Washington also had the lowest touchback percentage in the league, at 24.5%. Only Washington and New Orleans had a TB% of less than 42% last year. The median was 68% and the Jaguars led the league at 84.4%.

Some might wonder if this was because the Commanders kicker simply didn’t have a strong enough leg, but to hear Nick Bellore tell it, the decision to ‘kick short and cover’ was by design.

“You know, kicking the ball short and covering kicks — when you cover like we tend to, I think it’s a huge demoralizer for teams, especially later in the game, later in the season. To have guys that are willing to do it and coaches that are willing to put us in the position to do that, I think it’s huge.”

It seems as if the Commanders were pretty successful on covering kickoffs despite being the only team in the NFL to surrender two kickoff returns for touchdowns in ‘24. The Commanders ranked 9th in average return yards allowed, at 26.5. Forcing opposing offenses to start inside their own 30-yard line so consistently was an advantage for the Commanders.

Just as the high number of kickoffs was a sign of offensive success, so was the low number of punts. Only 3 NFL teams had fewer than 50 punts in 2024; the Commanders and Buccaneers tied for 4th fewest with exactly 50 punts each.

In the punt game, Washington ranked 6th in Net Avg at 43.1 yards, which was also a sign of special teams success.

More from Nick Bellore:

“The emphasis on special teams here — which I think some teams tend to overlook — as we’ve seen, can affect games hugely positively or negatively. We want to be a physical and disruptive force in the game, and I would hope everyone can see that when we’re running on all cylinders.”

While I’ve focused on kickoffs and punts because Bellore and Reaves specialize in tackling return men, the return game was also an important element of Washington’s success last year in winning field position battles.

The Commanders ranked 7th in kickoff return average, at 29.2 yards per return, and 2nd in returns of 20+ yards with 36 (the Titans were #1 with 39). Washington also had the 12th-longest return of the season (62 yards).

Washington also had success returning punts, ranking 9th in average return yards (10.4), and tying for 3rd most 20+ yard returns (4). The Commanders also tied for the 8th-longest punt return of the season (24 yards).

Nick Bellore:

“We’re only out there 15, 20, 25 snaps a game and trying to affect the game as much as we can when we’re out there.”

The only part of special teams play where the Commanders were really sub-par in 2024 was kicking field goals, but that’s no surprise for a team that used 3 different kickers during the season and signed at least a half-dozen different kickers between March and November.

Overall, though, the consistently high level of Washington’s special teams play made them one of the most successful ST units in the NFL last season, and was a key part of the team’s overall success.

This is a clear tribute to ST coordinator, Larry Izzo, and the commitment to excellence in this phase of the game from the GM and head coach. It’s easy to look at a roster spot taken up by a linebacker like Mykal Walker and wonder why he’s there, but his 14 special teams tackles (5th in the NFL in ‘24) are often invisible to anyone looking at the headline numbers in the box scores. Having players like Nick Bellore, Jeremy Reaves and Percy Butler back to help mold the next iteration of special teams play along with the coaching staff should contribute greatly to the quest to build on the team’s 2024 success in the coming season.

Hopefully, it’ll be another awesome year.