I want to start this by saying this is in no way trying to say Meyer is a bad coach or that I am not content with him as Ohio State's coach. This is only some research done out of curiosity from hearing every year how Meyer pays so much attention to special teams without really seeing much results. I've compared the Tressel (and Fickell) era versus the Meyer era below.

I'll summarize the results just in case you don't want to read a bunch of numbers:

• Meyer's teams have had 4% worse FG percentage than Tressel’s including the two worst Ohio State seasons (2014 & 2015) since 2001
• Meyer trumps Tressel in the blocked kicks category with .6 fewer blocks per season allowed and .4 more blocks on defense.
• I had trouble finding good stats for fake punts for Tressel’s teams. As far as I found for Meyer, he is 0/2 in his fake punt attempts. Please correct me if wrong
• Meyer has maintained consistency with PR/KR touchdowns, scoring and giving up an average of 1 per year. Although, his teams have only scored 1 in the past 3 years. Keep in mind, Florida scored 9 PR/KR touchdowns in Meyer's last 4 years.
• Tressel wins in opponent PR average with 6.3 per punt versus 7.26 for Meyer. While Meyer's teams held opponent KR to 18.32 opposed to Tressel's 19.85
• The area where Meyer's teams have excelled on the national scale is punting, averaging 43.44 yards per punt, almost 3 more than Tressel. I couldn't find a reliable stat to show how many punts were downed inside the 20 but Cam was a master at that

 My overall opinion would be that Meyer has neither improved or worsened the special teams. His approach has seemed to be try to win the field position battle while taking little risk and let his offense do the work. He has improved the punting game bringing in Cam Johnston and adding emphasis to punt/kickoff coverage. He has also improved in allowing less kick blocks and also blocking more kicks on defense.

On the other hand, his field goal team has at times diminished to the point where Meyer often goes for it on 4th down due to his lack of faith in special teams. Tyler Durbin was effective in 2016 but was only asked to kick over 40 yards five times, and making only two of those. Meyer's PR/KR stats would indicate a conservative approach, but it has been more of a high risk/low reward approach at times. With Corey Brown, Jalin Marshall, Dontre Wilson, and even Zeke all having fumbling issues, it has been puzzling that Meyer waited so long to address this issue.  What do you guys think, happy or you expected more?