Allen Park — Throughout training camp, we viewed the Detroit Lions’ return man competition as a battle between Tom Kennedy and Greg Dortch — which most of us admittedly got wrong.
The Lions went with Kennedy, and although the sample size is small, they had largely been proven right with their evaluation. After averaging 16.7 yards on punt returns during a brief audition as an injury replacement a year earlier, Kennedy was sitting at 13.2 yards per attempt to begin the 2026 campaign, before it was abruptly ended by a knee injury in the team’s Week 5 victory over Arizona.
Dortch, the undeniably more experienced returner, got scooped up by Buffalo after he was let go by Detroit. And he’s been fine for the Bills, averaging 9.3 yards per punt, which is a tick above his career average, but down nearly 20% from the previous season, the only one he would have ranked among the NFL’s top-10 in the category, had he enough returns to qualify.
Dortch has been slightly better on kickoffs, but even at 26.3 per try, he ranks 18th in the league, a fraction of a yard higher than league average.
But here’s a thought: What if the competition wasn’t supposed to just be Dortch vs. Kennedy, but Dortch vs. Kennedy vs. Kendrick Law?