Camp thoughts Vol. XIV

 

Is it premature to suggest Austin Seibert shouldn’t feel overly confident he will be the Browns’ placekicker throughout the entire 2020 National Football League season (if there is one)?

 

Yep.

 

Suffice it to say, though, his new head coach, as well as the special teams coordinator, will not tolerate inconsistency from a player who appears on the field as infrequently as the kicker as much as the old crew did last season.

 

The 2019 fifth-round draft choice missed only four of his 29 field-goal attempts, but failed to convert five of his 35 extra-point attempts. Of the nine misses, seven occurred on the lakefront. That’s got to change.

 

After starting the season with 16 straight field goal connections in the first nine games, Seibert fell into a rut and missed four of his next 13 in the final seven games, raising doubts about his consistency. All were between 45 ands 50 yards.

 

Three of the misses were at home, including a stunning two against Pittsburgh in week 11. His only reprieve from that game was the 21-7 victory from which emerged the six-game suspension of Myles Garrett. .

 

The first four of his five missed PATs (distance 33 yards) were at home (Tennessee, Seattle. Buffalo and Baltimore). He capped the season with a miss in Cincinnati. There are no excuses for missed extra points. They are like short-distance field goals.

 

Seibert is no longer a rookie. He knows – or should know by now – the perils of kicking a football at home in a building close enough to a lake whose capricious winds can play havoc with prolate spheroids flying through the air.

 

He needs to achieve consistency to the point where anything but excellence bordering perfection will not be tolerated. The fact the Browns brought four free-agent kickers into camp a week or so ago should serve as a warning. All left unsigned. It sort of served as the dreaded vote of confidence for Seibert.

 

If kicking at home continues to be a problem, maybe Seibert or special teams boss Mike Priefer should seek advice from someone who all but mastered the art of kicking in that facility.

 

Phil Dawson, who began his 21-year professional football career with the Browns in the expansion season of 1999 and lasted 14 very productive seasons, is now retired and living in his Austin, Texas.

 

He is currently the seventh-most accurate field-goal kicker (83.8%) in NFL history. He knows a little bit about kicking in that downtown Cleveland venue,

 

Dawson, who finished his career with San Francisco and Arizona, missed only eight extra points with the Browns (97.8%). But that’s a little misleading; Most were from a much shorter distance. (He converted 86.4% of his field goals between 30 and 39 yards).

 

Now 45, Dawson holds a raft of club records with 305 field goals, field goals in a game (six in 2006), most consecutive games with a field goal (23) and most consecutive successful field goals (29). He brought a rare consistency to a franchise that lacked that attribute in general for the first two decades.

 

You think he might be able to help Seibert overcome whatever problems still remain? If anybody can provide it, he can. Nothing wrong with soliciting Dawson, who thought so much of the Browns, he chose to retire from the NFL a year ago as an alumnus of the franchise.

 

Receiving advice from Dawson, whose son, Dru, is a freshman quarterback at Alabama-Birmingham, should be a no-brainer for General Manager Andrew Berry and  head coach Kevin Stefanski. It’s that kind of thinking outside the box that ultimately can make a significant difference.