Something seems off.

JK Scott, Alabama's senior punter is averaging just 39.4 yards a try this fall. That would put him 94th nationally if he had enough attempts to crack the list.

It would be weird considering Scott averaged 48.0 yards a punt as freshman when he was a Ray Guy Award finalist. His season average didn't dip below 44.3 in the two seasons after that.

Then a year ago, there was backlash when Scott didn't make the 10 semifinalists for the award going to the nation's best punter. His season average was 47.2.

So, what's the deal?

It's actually not as bad as the basic numbers suggest. In fact, Scott might be having one of his best seasons based on the ultimate goals of a punter.

Most notably, Scott is the only punter in the nation who has not had a punt returned. Of his 24 punts, 14 were fair catches, six went out of bounds and two were downed by Alabama players.

Only two have been touchbacks. Through eight games last year, he had four.

Pinning opponents deep is pretty important here, too. Fourteen of the 24 were downed inside the 20, or 58.3 percent.

And with fair catches, he's getting them on 58.3 percent of his punts. That rate was 27.3 percent through eight games of his three previous seasons.

Considering the plan is to avoid the opponent from advancing the ball on punts, this is pretty good. Utah's Mitch Wishnowsky, last year's Ray Guy Award winner, has allowed just one punt to be returned and it lost a yard. Technically, Alabama opponents were credited with one punt return for three yards since the blocked punt and safety at Texas A&M counts toward the team total.

The high number of fair catches speak to the hang time of Scott's punts and the speed of his gunners.

But the low average: What's the deal there?

A few shanks factor into this equation after mishitting kicks against Florida State (9 yards) and Texas A&M (19 yards).

Scott has also seen a few short fields among his 24 attempts. He's punted from the opponent's side of the 50 on eight occasions. The average field position of his tries: The Alabama 43. That leaves 57 yards with which to work and touchbacks hurting the net average.

The average starting field position for opponent drives after Scott punts is the 18.8-yard line.

All of that is important when considering what happened last season with the Ray Guy Award semifinalist situation. Scott had the No. 2 average for distance at 48.8 yards, but he didn't make it while No. 31 Zach Sinor (43.0 average) of Oklahoma State did.

AL.com asked the Ray Guy Award committee for the reason Scott didn't make the list. Within the thorough response, the award reps made a reasonable case.

"We review many more statistics and strongly factor into our decision the following statistics: net average, percentage of punts downed inside the 20, number of punts, and percentage of punts not returned."

Through eight games last year, Scott had 35.7 percent inside the 20. That's 58.7 percent now.

Percentage of punts not returned is 100. Last year at this point, it was 75 percent and the year before that, 62.5.

The net average (37.75 yards) isn't going to help Scott's cause since national leader Texas is sitting on 45.68 followed by Utah and reigning Ray Guy Award winner Wishnowsky at 45.11.

Given all the factors in play, however, it wouldn't be a stretch to argue this his best season of the four at Alabama.

Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande.