GREEN BAY, Wis. – As usual, there’s nothing special about the Green Bay Packers’ special teams.

Green Bay might be 4-0 headed into Sunday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals if not for Rich Bisaccia’s downtrodden kicking units. Against Cleveland, a blocked field goal was the difference between a 13-10 lead and a 13-10 loss. Against Dallas, a blocked extra point turned the tide and a long kickoff return set up the Cowboys for the go-ahead touchdown with a minute to play.

In Packers On SI’s first special teams rankings of the year, the Packers are 24th.

“Trust me,” Bisaccia said after Thursday’s practice, “I’ve been through worse and I’ve been through a lot better, and I expect, hopefully, not to go through anything worse, but I expect the better to come.

Our simple rankings, which debuted in 2013, focus on five key areas of the kicking game. One is field-goal percentage. The other four are based on field position following punts, punt returns, kickoffs and kickoff returns.

Here’s the rundown.

Daniel Whelan ranks third with a 51.8-yard average but the only thing that matters is net average, as that’s the amount of field position acquired. Whelan is 11th with a 42.9 net average. He has four punts inside the 20 and two touchbacks, and opponents are averaging 12.0 yards per punt return. Whelan is third in hangtime after finishing fourth last year, according to Pro Football Focus.

“We had a drive start of the 5, a drive start of the 11 in the last game, and so I think we have a lot of things to build on,” Bisaccia said.

Last season, Brandon McManus arrived at midseason and wound up finishing second in the NFL in field-goal percentage, going 20-of-21. This year, McManus is 7-of-9, with one of the misses being the critical block against Cleveland.

“If I’m on the field to score points, obviously, it’s an important play,” the injured McManus said on Thursday. “Whether it’s an extra point or a field goal, it’s important and I have to trust that they’re going to do their jobs because I know they trust me to do my job.

“The operation’s about 1.2 seconds, 1.3 seconds and there’s no way my brain can be thinking about if they’re going to be blocking. I’m more focused on my target and the kick ahead of me. They did a great job bouncing back in the game and, hopefully, the plan is for everyone to do their job and myself moving forward.”

Not part of the rankings are blocked field goals, since they show up in field-goal percentage. Also not part of the rankings are extra points, since they are relatively rare and one miss will skew the rankings. McManus is one of a dozen kickers with a miss on the ledger.

This is opponent net punting, which represents the impact of the return unit against opposition punters. Green Bay is 30th with a 5.2-yard average on punt returns. Jayden Reed had a 20-yard return against Detroit but is out with a broken collarbone. In his place has been rookie Matthew Golden, who hasn’t returned punts in his life and is last in the league with a 4.7-yard average.

“it’s a new deal for him every day,” Bisaccia said. “It’s a new deal for him today in practice, it’s going to be a new deal for him again in the game. We had a good conversation in the bye week. He wants to do it. He’s enjoying being back there. He knows it’s work (and) he’s really worked hard at it.”

This ranking is not return average. Rather, it’s starting field position. Green Bay’s average starting field position after a kickoff return is the 27.0-yard line. The league average is the 29.5, with 15 teams starting at the 30 or better. Against Dallas, the Packers started at their 20 following three kickoffs because of their inability to handle kicks placed near the goal line in the landing zone.

Rookie receiver Savion Williams has been the primary returner, a role he hasn’t handled since 2020 at TCU.

“Not only is it new to the league, but it’s certainly new to him, nothing he’s ever seen before,” Bisaccia said. “So, we’ve worked really hard on it this past week and how to handle those dirty kicks and, hopefully, you get a Sunday bounce. … We didn’t end up with a penalty anywhere, and we didn’t end up back inside the 20. So, there was a positive there to some degree.”

Again, this is not about kickoff-return average. It’s starting field position after a Packers kickoff. So, while only two teams are allowing more yards per kickoff return, McManus has the highest end-zone percentage, so it all works out to Green Bay just missing a spot in the top 10 with opponents starting at the 29.1, just a bit better than the league average of the 29.5.

“We’ve covered pretty good now on kickoff,” Bisaccia said.

Under Bisaccia, the Packers finished 22nd in these rankings last year, 28th in 2023 and 20th in 2022.

In terms of expected points, the Packers are 23rd.

“It hasn’t been a total failure, the three years that we’ve had,” Bisaccia said. “It’d be easy to come in here and cite some of the things that we’ve done really well. I just don’t live in that world. ‘Hey, here’s what we’ve done. Here’s what we have to keep building on.’ But, really, it’s incumbent on us to be critical of the other parts that we need to get better at. So, it’s not really all gloom and doom. Nothing’s going to happen to kill my spirit or attitude. I know we have some issues that we have to correct. …

“I just like to think we’re going to always be a work in progress. I’ve always told you guys, special teams is one play, and that one play, magnified over a period of time, it’s a big play in the game. We don’t get those 72 or 68 plays. We’re getting anywhere from 23 to 33 plays right now in the game, and if you have one big gaffe or two that affect the game, and it just gets magnified.”