CLEVELAND, Ohio — Browns kicker Andre Szmyt is surrounded by cameras, and the flash makes him look like Dustin Hopkins.
Or Cade York. Or Zane Gonzalez.
The faces blend together after so many shank jobs. The surprise dulls. When Szmyt missed two kicks during Sunday’s 17-16 loss against the Bengals, Cleveland shifted into standard operating procedure.
We all know how this works by now: Reporters ask Szmyt why he missed. He mumbles meek replies. Then his teammates shift blame from the kicker’s foot, as quarterback Joe Flacco, edge rusher Myles Garrett, and cornerback Greg Newsome (among others) all did on Sunday.
No loss falls on one player. Everybody makes mistakes. The kicker will rebound.
The Browns said it all again Sunday, but I won’t rehash the quotes here.
Fans are tired of reading about this problem. You want a solution, or at least somebody to blame. And your kicker trauma training tells you to tweet mean things at Szmyt.
But I’m telling you: Fans have the wrong fall guy.
By the time Szmyt trotted toward the sideline after missing a go-ahead field goal with 2:25 to play Sunday, this problem was already bigger than him. It had already climbed Cleveland’s masthead past kickers, teammates and coaches.
It started at the top.
General manager Andrew Berry has cycled through seven players (and counting?) at Szmyt’s position in five years running Cleveland’s front office. But somehow, he was still caught off guard by a once undrafted, later unsigned kicker who couldn’t deliver during his first real NFL game.
Who could’ve known?
More like who should’ve, and Berry fits the bill in both cases. I don’t pretend to know place-kicking, but Sunday’s predicament felt predictable. in fact, you could argue it’s been building for two seasons.
Our story starts with a small win.
The Browns traded a seventh-round round pick for veteran kicker Dustin Hopkins in 2023 and, credit where due, he overdelivered. Hopkins made 33 of 36 field goal attempts during his first season in Cleveland, including 8 of 8 from 50 yards away and longer. Both marks were career bests for a 33-year-old veteran. History counts few players who find a new peak after nine seasons.
Fluke year? Too harsh a phrase. Outlier season? We’re getting closer.
We’re also talking kickers, one of football’s most fickle positions. These dudes will miss five field goals in a season, then four in the same month. And last offseason, Cleveland’s data-driven front office made a bold bet on Hopkins
The Browns rewarded him with a three-year, $15 million extension last offseason, even though his contract already ran through 2024. To reiterate, retaining Hopkins did not require an extension. Cleveland could’ve asked the kicker to prove himself again last season, then reassess at year’s end.
Instead, they paid him $8.3 million guaranteed right before he regressed to his mean.
The fallout: Hopkins made just 18 of 27 kicks last year, or a career-low 66.7%. He made 4 of 8 from beyond 50 yards, which matched his career average (50%) before 2023. The Browns kept him all year, anyway, because it’s hard to justify eating dead cap money on a kicker’s contract.
They kept their dream alive this summer, hoping that Hopkins would shake his cold streak during the offseason. But last month, Cleveland finally found the stomach to start anew.
On Aug. 26, three days after Hopkins missed an extra point in the team’s preseason finale, they waived him. He will count almost $5 million against their salary cap over the next two seasons. In his place, the Browns have a similar problem in a younger, cheaper package.
When Cleveland put Sunday’s game at Szmyt’s feet, it trusted a kicker who played in the UFL last season. It trusted somebody who had never made an NFL roster before this one. It trusted a player who, even in his last two seasons at Syracuse (2021-22), had made just 72.5% of his kicks.
Why did Szmyt fit Cleveland’s bill for camp competition? Why not sign a veteran after cutting Hopkins? Did the Browns watch 41-year-old Bills kicker Matt Prater kick three field goals on Sunday night just three days after arriving in Buffalo?
Better yet, did they call him?
All better questions than the usuals posed on Sunday. Szmyt can tell us why he missed Sunday, but he struggled to apply the lesson. Teammates wanted to support him, but they didn’t all know how.
“I feel like saying something to people in that situation, especially if you don’t know them that well, you don’t know if you’re adding unnecessary pressure,” Garrett said of Szmyt. “He’s going to make those kicks, and we’re going to be better for it…”
The Browns want to believe that, but they’ve been hurt before. After Sunday’s performance, Hopkins could be replaced soon.
Sorry, his name’s Szymt. The names blend together in this fickle kicking world. Few football towns know this better than Cleveland, where people practiced kick push protocol again Sunday.
And a front office saw its poor plan exposed.
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