What's more, the Eagles have downed 10 of Rocca's 25 punts inside the 20, a 40 percent rate. McBriar was at 27 percent last season.
Little wonder Rocca, the NFC special teams player of the month in September, is thinking of the ultimate honor a punter can receive: Pro Bowl.
"That's the pinnacle of it," Rocca said.
That's because, of course, punters don't usually get votes for regular-season MVP or Super Bowl MVP.
Rocca didn't drag his family 10,000 miles from his homeland for a free trip to Hawaii. The Pro Bowl would be nice, but . . .
"I want to win a championship. I want a ring. No one from Australia's done that before," Rocca said.
In fact, the main reason Rocca isn't lounging on the 200-acre property he owns with his brother 2 hours north of his native Melbourne is, despite his 748 goals in the Australian Football League, he never won the big one. Or even the medium-big one.
"That was my goal in Australia: to play in the championship," Rocca said. "I played in three postseason games and we lost all of them. I've still yet to experience a winning postseason game."
Considering that, and Rocca's pedigree, he is less Brett Favre - the NFL player with whom he once was compared - than he is Y.A. Tittle, also 0-3 in the playoffs.
But then, Tittle is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Rocca probably won't make it there - he will be 35 next month - but ranking 13th on the AFL goals list makes him a decent candidate for the Australian Football Hall of Fame, when he is eligible in 2009.
That would be a pleasant, if coincidental, postscript to his AFL life.
Right now, he wants a Super Bowl ring, and he wants to fade away.
Despite having served as a color analyst for Australia's SBS, which televised Super Bowl XLII in Australia in January, Rocca has no taste for a life of celebrity. He might have a future as an AFL commentator, but he doesn't even watch AFL games.
