Football Outsiders: White & Slater lead Patriots Special Teams

It’s no secret that I was openly rooting for Matthew Slater to get cut last year. Everyone says he’s a great guy, but I think my problem with him were his horrendous kick returns. He was a master of running full speed, straight on into tacklers. Usually he got himself drilled and pumped up the other team in the process. Well in 2010 Slater didn’t return a single kick and now he’s starting to grow on me. Clearly he’s fast and is an above average special teams player (when he doesn’t have the ball in his hands), so this summer I probably won’t be rooting for him to be cut.

White is the kind of player that no one ever sees coming. There’s always a lot of roster movement around final cutdowns over Labor Day weekend and White was one guy who randomly became a Patriot that weekend. He doesn’t have the build to really play defense for the Pats but clearly they identified him as a player who could help on Special Teams and he did just that.