It usually is overlooked how many chess moves are made on special teams compared to how much offense and defense are dissected. There were a few things going on that made it hard for Alabama's special teams to get them off the rugby punt and/or field the punt cleanly:
1. Washington likes using the shield punt formation with wide splits. This makes it harder to get a defender around the corner to pressure the punter into an abbreviated roll out or block it outright.
2. Washington did a great deal of motions pre snap with the punt formation which I think affected our blocking schemes at times.
3. Washington and Chris Petersen are known for having inventive trick plays and great fakes in special teams formations.
There was a confluence of many factors that made it hard for us to get clean blocks and good pressure on the punter to force a quicker kick. We wanted to stay safe against them for the most part, but we probably had to concede having returnable punts in the process. To be honest, Diggs had one or two that he'd like to have back but several times the blocking wasn't there so several UDub players were around the bouncing ball. Diggs would've been foolish to get in the fray.
Washington didn't want to give up any non-offensive scores on returns. It feels like they spent a great deal of their prep time on taking our punt returner out of the game.
