For the majority of football fans, most discussions over the importance of special teams will be met only with a chorus of groans. Quite frankly, many of those professional journalists who cover the game, such as the wiener-averse Ed Bouchette, frequently downplay its importance and particularly the value of having ‘special teams players’ on the roster.
To be fair, there are probably no more than a couple or a few dozen players at most, at any given time, who successfully manage to carve out a long-term career by almost exclusively being a non-specialist contributor on special teams, with the most notable in the league being Matthew Slater.