DETROIT -- The ball is in the air, off an opposing punter’s foot, and Jamal Agnew knows it is almost time for him to go. By now, in the middle of his rookie season with the Detroit Lions, he trusts what’s happening ahead of him.
He’ll glance to see angles of the gunners. He’ll check his protection. But when he makes the decision to attempt a return, he searches for the sliver of room he’ll need to break open a return and change a game.
It has worked better than Agnew ever expected.
Halfway through his first season in the league, he has become the NFL’s best punt returner.
“I thought I would have an impact on special teams, but not this tremendous, to be honest,” Agnew said. “I didn’t think it would be like this. I definitely thought, coming in, it would be a special-teams role, but I didn’t think I’d have this crazy of an impact right now, to be honest.”
Agnew is the only player in the NFL with two punt returns for touchdowns this season, and on Sunday against the Cleveland Browns he came close to having a third. He’s averaging 18.26 yards per return, 4.47 yards better than the Baltimore Ravens' Michael Campanaro.
Since 2001, only one player has had a better full-season punt return average than what Agnew has so far: The Buffalo Bills' Leodis McKelvin, with 18.74 yards per return in 2012. If this pace remains, Agnew will have a better return season than Devin Hester, Josh Cribbs or Dante Hall ever had.
As of now, Agnew's 18.26 yards per return would rank No. 11 all time -- well behind Lions Pro Football Hall of Famer Jack Christiansen’s 21.5 yards per return in 1952 and just ahead of Hester, whose best season was 17.09 yards per return in 2010.
Agnew has 347 punt return yards this season. No other player in the league has more than 200 yards.
“Yeah, you give him a little crack and some space and he can make some things happen,” Lions coach Jim Caldwell said. “And particularly when the situation is where they give you something that you have an opportunity, it’s not one of the sky balls that you got to fair catch.
“When it’s got some distance on it, he can cover some ground.”
Agnew has become a must-see attraction. Whenever he’s on the field, he's one of the few players on the Lions with the capability of turning in a big play any time he touches the ball.
He has managed that on a combination of trust, speed and a lot of help, starting with what he sees.
“First off, I try to see the distance between me and the gunners and usually I have a lot of room, because our jammers in our corps are so good,” Agnew said. “If you watch the film, they are busting their butts blocking for me. I can’t do anything else but do my job and make something happen.
“But as soon as I catch the ball, I look to see what’s our return looking like and can I hit it. It’s a quick, quick little decision, and it all happens fast, but we always get the job done.”
As he says this, Agnew snaps his fingers quick. It’s how fast he makes the decision to hustle and get as many yards as he can if the blocking isn’t there. If it is setting up for a potential game-changing return, like it did with scoring returns against the New York Giants and New Orleans Saints, he trusts what his blockers are going to hold up.
Agnew’s speed helps once he gets space. He topped out at 20.41 mph on his 74-yard return against New Orleans and 19.66 mph on his 88-yard return against the Giants. By the time he reaches top acceleration, he’s close to making the play into a scoring one.
While the big returns stand out, his non-scoring returns offer consistency. He succeeds there through a combination of blockers and instincts -- and by believing in it.
“You’ve got to trust the play. It’s just like any other play on offense,” Agnew said. “Also, you’ve got to have really good instincts to be a punt returner, just because somebody may get beat on their leverage side, so you know you got to improvise a little bit, and that rarely happens.
“But when it does, I just do my job and make a guy miss. And once I make that guy miss, our guys are taught, your guy beats you, go look for somebody else.”
It has worked more often than not this season. In the seven games he has returned a punt, he has averaged 10 yards or better per return in all but two. It led the Lions to using him sparingly on offense (seven plays) while he’s also learning defense.
Playing cornerback is the rookie's future, and offense, for now, is a novelty. His present is as a returner, where the fifth-round pick in the spring could be a Pro Bowler by winter. That’s something he can’t quite process yet.
“It would mean a lot,” Agnew said. “Guys always talk about it, how Pro Bowl is so cool, get the opportunity to play with some of the best players in the league. They say there’s nothing like it.”
If he keeps playing like he is, he could soon find out for himself.