Brendon Ayanbadejo's special world

Special teams gunners don't get a lot of love. Sure, they get one Pro Bowl slot set aside in each conference, but you won't find them on a list of the league's best tacklers. Their tackles just get tossed in with all the other tackles when it comes to league stat totals -- and nobody makes a list of which gunners do the most to take down a punt returner before he can even get a yard.

Until now.

We've counted up all the returns from the last five years to create three new stats: Return tackles, return stops and return saves.

Return tackles

Return tackles are simple: the number of tackles and assists that a player makes on kick and punt returns. This doesn't count onside kicks or end-of-half squib kicks.

For the full breakdown of these new metric categories and 10 leaders in two of the categories -- plus a Jet who is a stud at a position you don't normally view as having studs -- you need to be an Insider.

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Aaron Schatz

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• NFL analyst for ESPN Insider
• Founder of Footballoutsiders.com
• Contributes regularly to "Numbers Never Lie"