CBS Sports Ranks Jaguars' Josh Lambo, Logan Cooke Top-10 At Their Positions
After years of turnover, the Jacksonville Jaguars may not have a star-studded roster that gets national recognition, but they do still boast one of the best special teams duos in all of the NFL.
Jacksonville's duo of kicker Josh Lambo and punter Logan Cooke each excelled in 2019 with both players serving as legitimate bright spots for a team that otherwise didn't have many. As a result, each player found themselves in the top-10 of CBS Sports' rankings of the best kickers and punters.
Related: Jaguars Special Teams Spotlight: Josh Lambo.
Lambo was ranked as the league's No. 3 kicker, with Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker (No. 2) and Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker (No. 1) as the only players ranked ahead of him. Following a 2019 season in which Lambo was automatic for the Jaguars (97.1% of field goal attempts made), Lambo frankly should have earned consideration for the Pro Bowl.
If Jacksonville was a better team or even in a bigger market, you would hear Lambo's name brought up more during debates of the top kickers in the NFL, but the numbers show the cold hard evidence of his greatness.
"Lambo must love kicking in Jacksonville, because he's made almost every kick he's attempted since signing with the team in 2017. During his two years in Jacksonville, Lambo hit 92.7 percent of his field goals, and then somehow, he TOPPED that number in 2019. Last season, Lambo was the NFL's most accurate kicker, hitting 97.1% of his kicks (33 of 34)," CBS wrote.
"The reason you don't hear Lambo's name more is because he plays for a bad team, which means he's rarely in a position where he's trying big kicks. That being said, Lambo did hit a monstrous kick last season against the Broncos in Week 4 when he hit a walk-off field goal from 33 yards out that gave the Jags a 26-23 win."
While Lambo gets the most praise thanks to his reliability and penchant for game-winning kicks (see last year's Denver game), Cooke had a strong second season for the Jaguars. The 2018 seventh-round draft pick's punt net average was 44.5 yards, third in the NFL, and he was steady for the Jaguars from the first game of the season to the last one, often putting the defense in favorable scenarios in terms of field position.
"Of Cooke’s 75 punts, 34.75% (26) were fair catches with one more—his first of the season—gaining no yardage despite no fair catch being signaled. In conjunction with the 11 downed punts, that means 38 of the Jags punts—57.75%—were essentially stopped before any chance of a return," JaguarReport writer Kassidy Hill wrote in June.
"Although Cooke ranked just sixth in the league in yards per punt (46.5), he was tied for first in the all-important net yards per punt with an average of 44.5. One reason Cooke's net average so high was because he forced a lot of fair catches," CBS wrote. "Opposing returners called for 26 fair catches on Cooke's punts last season, which was tied for the second-highest total in the NFL. Opposing returners also only averaged 5.3 yards per return against the Jaguars, which was tied for the fourth-best coverage in the NFL, which means Jacksonville was actually good at something last season, even though it kind of seemed like they were bad at everything."
The Jaguars have not gotten much love from the national media this offseason, with most analysts pegging the team as a better candidate to pick No. 1 overall in 2021 than to reach the .500 mark. But the duo of Lambo and Cooke was so impressively consistent in 2019 that it is impossible to not give them praise when discussing the top kickers and punters in the league, giving the Jaguars an area to hang their hats on.
Cooke and Lambo will once again be vital for Jacksonville in 2020. If the two can get better play around them, perhaps they will continue to get high praise from around the sports world.
