The AFC continues to be one of the most fascinating and confusing divisions in football, and that doesn’t change when it comes to our AFC East special teamers.
Despite the Buffalo Bills and New England Patriots being the two playoff teams in the division, one of them doesn’t even have a player on this list.
The New York Jets, who went 3-14 in 2025, will be featured multiple times here.
Beyond that, the AFC East special teamers were even harder to rank due to multiple competitions at kicker and punter within the division and no clear sign of who is going to win some of these position battles. Also, multiple possible starters in this division are coming off season-long injuries in 2025, which made those guys harder to place as well.
Long story short, this isn’t an impressive special teams division, which made ranking these players all the more difficult.
With that introduction complete, welcome to the top AFC East special teamers for the 2026 season.
The Best AFC East Special Teamers for 2026
5. Tommy Doman Jr., P, Buffalo Bills
It’s clear this isn’t the strongest division at special teams when a rookie punter leads things off.
With that said, Doman Jr. is on this list because of that intrigue with being a rookie and being drafted in the seventh round as a punter.
Technically, he’s not even guaranteed the starting role over 34-year-old veteran punter Mitch Wishnowsky, but when a team spends any draft pick on a kicker or punter, they usually have an advantage in that competition.
Adding to that, Wishnowsky wasn’t particularly impressive last year as he earned a grade of 71.2 on Pro Football Focus (PFF), which made him just the 16th-best punter in the league and average at best.
Couple this with the age and the fact that the Bills don’t punt much, and it seems like a pretty good guess that Doman Jr. will get a chance to be Buffalo’s punter in 2026.
As for Doman Jr. as a player, he is 23-years old and played his college ball at both Michigan and, most recently, Florida. He earned All-SEC honors in 2025 and earned a 92.2 PFF grade, which placed him as the second-best punter in all of college football out of the 209 who qualified.
He averaged 4.52 seconds of hang-time per punt and had a long punt of 71 yards, showcasing the leg strength as well.
Whether Doman Jr. works out at the NFL level is a question mark, of course, but the college resume speaks for itself, and on a list with this thin of options, that’ll earn you a flyer at the number five spot.
4. Tyler Bass, K, Buffalo Bills
And now for the other side of the Bills special teams room: kicker Tyler Bass.
Bass competed for this spot on the list with potential Dolphins kickers Riley Patterson and Zane Gonzalez (both of whom might be better or at least comparable to Bass), but due to the fact that Bass is not in a competition to start for his team and they are, he gets the nod here.
Bass was the Bills kicker for 83 games from 202o-2024 before a left hip/groin injury took him out for the entirety of 2025. In his place was 41-year-old veteran Matt Prater, who did an admirable job filling in.
The 29-year-old is currently the only kicker on the Bills roster, showing a belief that he will be the starter come week one of the 2026 season, and he has earned that role throughout his career, making 84.5% of his field goal attempts and 96.4% of his extra point attempts.
Bass and the Bills agreed to a revised contract in March of this year as well, even more so reflecting that he will be the Bills kicker for 2026.
While Bass isn’t a special kicker, none of the kickers in this division are, and he has been reliable for a team that gets in field goal range a lot. That alone earns him a spot on the list.
3. Jason Sanders, K, New York Jets
Sanders isn’t even a lock to start for his own team, but he’s getting this spot anyway just based on the ability he has shown in the past.
He entered the 2025 season as the Miami Dolphins kicker before a hip injury kept him out the entire season. Riley Patterson, who was mentioned earlier, filled in for Sanders and converted 27 out of 29 field goal attempts as well as 97.1% of his extra point attempts.
Sanders was then initially signed by the New York Giants this offseason but was then waived in early June before the Jets signed him just days later to compete with Cade York for their starting job following the departure of the dependable Nick Folk this offseason to the Atlanta Falcons.
Sanders has shown much more than York throughout his career, so there seems to be a decent chance that he will be the Jets kicker come week one.
He was named to the All-Pro first team in 2020, and in his most recent season in 2024, he made 37 out of 41 field goal attempts with a long of 57. He also made 26 out of his 28 extra point attempts that season.
For his career, Sanders is converting 84.6% on field goal attempts and 96.6% on extra point attempts.
Assuming the hip is all good, the 30-year-old Sanders is one of the more dependable legs in the league and would be a solid successor to Folk for the Jets.
2. Bradley Pinion, P, Miami Dolphins
The top two spots on this list are both occupied by punters on teams that are likely to be punting a lot in 2026, so there’s that.
The first of those two players is the 32-year-old veteran Bradley Pinion, who spent the last four years in Atlanta before signing with the Dolphins this offseason.
Pinion isn’t elite, but he earned an overall 75.9 PFF grade in 2025, which was 11th amongst the 32 qualified punters. He pinned opponents inside the 20-yard line 36 times throughout the season and had a hang-time of 4.40 seconds per punt.
After placing just 29.8% of his punts inside the opponent’s 20-yard line in 2024, he upped that percentage to over 53% in 2025, which was a career high.
Beyond that, Pinion is dependable as he has played in all 17 games for each of the last four seasons.
There’s nothing elite about Pinion, but he’s an above-average punter on a team that will likely be punting a lot and could use help when it comes to field position. He will help them when it comes to that, which makes him a valuable number two on this list.
1. Austin McNamara, P, New York Jets
Truthfully, this was the only spot on this list that was easy to rank, and that’s because the Jets punter is head and shoulders above every other special teamer in the AFC East.
As a rookie punter in 2025, the then-24-year-old McNamara earned a PFF grade of 90.3, which was second in the NFL among the qualified punters. He did this while being on the field nonstop and punting 71 times for a bad Jets offense that couldn’t move the ball.
McNamara’s punts averaged 43.4 yards, which was sixth best in the NFL, and he pinned opponents inside the 20-yard line on 45.1% of his punts.
He also had a long punt of 71 yards and had an average of 4.70 seconds of hang-time per punt.
Now entering his second season in the NFL, McNamara will look to continue and cement himself as not only the best punter in his division, but one of the more effective punters in the NFL.
With the way things looked as a rookie, it seems he’s got a pretty good chance to do that.
Main Photo: [Gregory Fisher] – Imagn Images
