{"id":799770,"date":"2026-03-08T05:09:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T05:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/799770\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T05:09:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T05:09:27","slug":"new-york-jets-does-austin-mcnamaras-impressive-2025-season-hold-up-to-scrutiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/799770\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Jets: Does Austin McNamara\u2019s impressive 2025 season hold up to scrutiny?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we head into the offseason, at least there\u2019s one position the Jets don\u2019t need to worry about right now. After an impressive first NFL season, punter Austin McNamara is under contract for 2026 and the Jets control his rights as an exclusive rights free agent in 2027. They\u2019ll even retain some control over him in 2028 when he\u2019ll be a restricted free agent.<\/p>\n

At the end of each season we like to take an in-depth look at how the Jets\u2019 punter(s) performed. It\u2019s now time to do the same for McNamara to see if his 2025 season actually stands up to scrutiny.<\/p>\n

Last year, we concluded that despite a downturn in his raw numbers, Thomas Morstead hadn\u2019t been as bad as it seemed and was still worthy of holding a job at the NFL level. While that ended up not being with the Jets, he did hold down a job all year, but his raw numbers were again underwhelming as it looks like the Jets may have moved on at the right time.<\/p>\n

For McNamara, the November winner of the AFC\u2019s special teams player of the month award, it was a solid first year that saw him among the league leaders for most of the season in raw numbers, although he ended up outside the top 10 for gross average and tied for 7th in net average.<\/p>\n

One reason for this was that he was punting from deep inside the Jets\u2019 territory a lot more often earlier in the year, enabling him to boom it long and bolster those gross numbers. In the second half, he got more chances for directional punting which often hurts a punter\u2019s raw numbers even if they do it well.<\/p>\n

21 of McNamara\u2019s first 29 punts came from inside the Jets\u2019 35, including nine of 10 at one stage. However, only 10 of his next 36 were from inside the 35, including eight in a row from outside the 35 at one point.<\/p>\n

McNamara was ranked as the second best punter in the league on analysis site Pro Football Focus, though, which would take into account the situational variations.<\/p>\n

Our own metric seeks to take into account field position and ignores the effects of penalties to assess how optimal a punter\u2019s performance was over the course of the season.<\/p>\n

GGN readers who\u2019ve followed our analysis on Morstead and Braden Mann over the past few years will be familiar with this metric, which we call ANPP and is designed to measure how efficiently a punter performs when taking into account field position. (A more detailed explanation of what this statistic entails is here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

This metric provides us with a sliding scale from 60 to 70 within which virtually all punters will land over a large sample size. Anything close to 60 means your job is in danger and anything close to 70 means you\u2019re among the league\u2019s best.<\/p>\n

Morstead still posted a 67 last year, which translates to above average on our sliding scale, but it was a drop-off from his own performance in the previous season and Mann\u2019s numbers with the Eagles. But how did McNamara fare?<\/p>\n

In 2025, McNamara posted an ANPP of 73 percent. That\u2019s a spectacular number, one of the best we\u2019ve ever seen over a full season sample size. (Mann posted an incredible 78 one year in college, although he never got close to that number again).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s enough to make it worth asking if the recent changes to the ball preparation rules have had a positive effect on punting to the point where maybe our sliding scale should move up to 65-to-75. This would render Morstead\u2019s 2024 performance as below average while still making McNamara\u2019s 2025 number close to elite. This can be something we reconsider next season.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, McNamara\u2019s 2025 season does hold up to scrutiny, by any measure, with the second half drop-off in gross numbers easily explained with the additional context and therefore no cause for concern.<\/p>\n

It also warrants mention that Chris Banjo deserves some credit because his coverage units did a consistent job of limiting return yardage all year, despite the fact two of the candidates to be the primary gunners (Irv Charles and Kris Boyd) missed the entire season. Those gunner roles were shared between the likes of Kene Nwangwu, Arian Smith, Ja\u2019Markis Weston and Qwan\u2019tez Stiggers, each of whom made positive contributions.<\/p>\n

In 2026, McNamara will need to maintain that consistency but if he can continue to prove that last year was no accident, he is well on the way to being able to establish himself as one of the league\u2019s elite punters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As we head into the offseason, at least there\u2019s one position the Jets don\u2019t need to worry about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2051],"tags":[7,226,1917,255,84552,2321,2097,6],"class_list":["post-799770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-jets","tag-football","tag-jets","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-jets","tag-new-york-jets-analysis","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkjets","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116191832690711031","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}