DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Browns' Phil Dawson ready to move on

Browns’ Phil Dawson ready to move on
By Associated Press
Wednesday, December 29, 2010

CLEVELAND — Amid almost constant upheaval, kicker Phil Dawson has survived Cleveland’s chaos.

The last of the expansion Browns, he’s preparing for perhaps his final game with them.

The 35-year-old’s career has come full circle. He’ll become a free agent following Sunday’s game against the rival Pittsburgh Steelers, the team he faced in his Browns debut. The super steady Dawson, the club’s all-time leader in field goals, has come to terms with the reality he may play elsewhere next season.

He’s open to re-signing with Cleveland, but Dawson recently sold his house here and his family has moved back to Texas, where he’ll soon return before deciding where he’ll kick next.

Dawson feels he has plenty left, and said "they’re going to have to kick me out the door" before he retires

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/footb...n=recent_bullet

Hopefully Phil gets to kick for a winner if he's not resigned. It's going to be sad to see him go.

I cannot believe that we're not re-signing him


So what if he wants $3M per year.... he's freaking worth it!
Heckert... SIGN HIM!

Pay the man

They need to pay the man.. but then again.. I'm sure there is someone out there who can kick FG"s in bad weather.

Didn't think we could find a new punter.. but we did..

Same goes for any other position in football..

Very true, and Phil had a rather sub-par year.

I'm sure we'll find somebody, but I'd have loved to see Phil retire a BROWN.... he's more than earned the money over the years, but of course the current administration has no ties to his past here, so that won't be taken into consideration.

How long til we hear Joe Thomas saying the same thing?

The problem is there is no loyalty. Not from player to team, not from team to player.

I understand both sides.

No kicker is worth $3 million.

The Ravens picked Billy Cundiff off the scrap heap and he's in the Pro Bowl.

St.Clair is making 3mil/year...just saying...

Probably another 5 seasons maybe?

I love Phil Dawson. He's the best Cleveland kicker I've ever seen in my lifetime (last 30 years). Not only that but he's a great person, husband and father.

That being said, it's just unwise to invest that much money into special teams. Zastudil was a great punter but we've replaced him with Hodges and haven't missed a beat. In fact, he's been excellent. IMO we never should have given Cribbs his new contract either. He's a glorified kick/punt returner and you just don't pay returners (even the best in NFL history) as much as he's getting paid. So, I can't see how we spend on Phil either. We'll all miss him but I'm sure the next guy we bring in will be MUCH cheaper and still serviceable which will allow us to spend some more on other positions that have a larger impact on the W's on game day.

Probably not. I figure another 5 years will have him at the end of his 9th season... chances are he will be beginning to decline a bit by then and whichever jackwagon is running the team by then will probably begin taking a hard look at production vs. paycheck.

Half of me thought that Dawson just might have kicked that onside kick last week short on purpose knowing that play was a make or break play for Mangini's carreer here in Cleveland. Dawson said to himself, "Self, if I kick this short on purpose, that would be payback for Mangini not signing me long term last year when he had the chance."

Things that make you go hmmmmm....

I think that's the problem with Dawson too,...he's at the end of his rope.

He has the Browns by the short hairs. He's not worth 3 mil a year, no one else is gonna pay him that, and he can probably retire financially. He can also get paid less and win somewhere else.

Sorry to see him go, but sometimes your point man takes one in the head. Phil is not the point man. The FG kicker does not make the "one-man difference" like other positions can.

He's already moved his family back to Texas?

Joe's family lives in Brookfield, Wi. just west of Milwaukee. Brookfield is a very nice community and it has just about everything one could want. Having lived in Wisconsin for 14 years my wife and I would go over to Brookfield quite often.
It would not surprise me to see Joe leave after his contract expires and join Green Bay. That's home to him, Packers are a very good team, they were probably his team as a kid growing up.

This is the way negotiation works. Two parties trying to convince each other that they're willing to "walk away". Phil Dawson is a top tier PK, and I hope the Browns are willing to pay him a fair salary, based on the market for top tier PK's. Anything more is a disservice to the Browns; anything less is a disservice to Phil. I hope to see him retire a Brown.

Phil has been a rock for us, and I thank him for that. If he wishes to move on then I wish him nothing but good luck.

Just clicking on you

Ah, its started. The annual we don't need Phil Dawson thread. Nonsense will be spewed all offseason about how Phil has lost it, how kickers aren't important, how they aren't worth the money, how we can find anyone playing high school soccer to come in and kick field goals, blah blah blah. Then we'll get to the beginning of next season and we'll see what a truly average kicker looks like and all the people who said "who needs phil" will be changing their tune to "I've been saying pay Phil all along!"

Happens every year. I'll keep you guys seat on the Phil Dawson bandwagon warm for you until next season.

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Half of me thought that Dawson just might have kicked that onside kick last week short on purpose knowing that play was a make or break play for Mangini's carreer here in Cleveland. Dawson said to himself, "Self, if I kick this short on purpose, that would be payback for Mangini not signing me long term last year when he had the chance."

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WHAT !!!!!!!! It amazes me some of the things people come up with on here.

Quote:

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Things that make you go hmmmmm....

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Things that make me go.AAAAAHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!!!!

Like many , I would be surprised IF we allowed Dawson to leave....IMO , he should end his career as a Brown....However , IF we blow this team up and start rebuilding again I couldn't blame him for wanting to leave....That said....IF St.Clair is making 3mil/year...just saying....Pay the Dawson , we ALL should be able to agree that he is worth as much as St.Clair....

If they were going to pay Dawson $3 million/year, they would have already done so.

Dawson will move on, regardless of how they feel the team is developing.

I also think that they worry about signing Dawson, at age 35, to a long term deal worth big dollars. Kickers tend to go all of a sudden. They probably feel that there is no sense investing big money in a position that has long odds against being productive after age 35.

Tis better to make sound management decisions than sentimental decisions....however from back in 2008:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

N.F.L. Kickers Who Are Defying Time and Distance
By STEFAN FATSIS
Published: November 8, 2008

N.F.L. kickers are having their best season. And the oldest among them have been the best of all.

Defying time and logic, kickers 35 and older have converted 90 percent of their field-goal attempts — 6 percentage points better than their younger counterparts. That is a statistically significant margin, considering that in the N.F.L., every kick can be the difference between one more game and forced retirement.

Some of the aging kickers have been perfect or close to it. The Giants’ John Carney — the oldest player in the N.F.L. at 44 — has made 18 of 19 field-goal attempts, and his miss was a block. Carolina’s John Kasay, who has spent 18 of his 39 years in the league, is 16 for 16. Detroit’s Jason Hanson, 38 and in his 17th season, is 10 for 10, including a league-leading five field goals of 50 yards or longer.

Of the 36 kickers who have attempted a field goal this season, eight are 35 or older. They have converted 109 of 121 kicks, or 90.1 percent. The other 28 kickers are 334 for 397, or 84.1 percent. Over all, N.F.L. kickers have converted 85.5 percent of their chances, on track for a sixth consecutive record-breaking season.

Leaguewide percentages typically do not decline later in the season.

The older kickers have not benefited from a lot of chip shots. A total of 42.1 percent of their field goals have been from 40 yards or more, compared with 35.6 percent for everyone else. The length of the average N.F.L. field goal has been 35.9 yards. The 35-and-over kickers are averaging 37.0 yards.

The kickers do not seem surprised.

“When you’re lining up from 48 yards out, you know what to do,” said Baltimore’s Matt Stover, 40, who is in his 19th season. “You know how to approach the game, you know what to do in the off-season. The whole package is already there.”

Indeed, longevity and late-career success are not unusual among N.F.L. kickers. George Blanda was still toe-kicking at 48. Jan Stenerud, the only full-time kicker in the Hall of Fame, had his best seasons at ages 39, 41 and 42. Gary Anderson, who played 23 seasons before retiring in 2004, was 35 for 35 at age 39 in 1998.

All kickers face diminished leg strength over time; years of jamming one leg into the ground and slamming the ball with the other takes its toll. But some bodies withstand the tens of thousands of repetitions better than others. Even more important, maturity and experience help kickers fine-tune and even improve their skills at ages when their former teammates are hosting radio shows and running car dealerships.

“You understand what it takes to get ready physically and mentally,” said Morten Andersen, who kicked for the Atlanta Falcons in 2007 at age 47, then retired as the leading scorer in N.F.L. history after 25 seasons.

Older kickers, he said, “stick to a plan that works for them and they don’t deviate from it.”

He added, “They plan their work and they work their plan.”

In other words, kickers adapt. Early in his 16-year career, the Falcons’ Jason Elam did not lift weights and did not stretch before kicking.

“I used to touch my toes, put the ball down on the 40 and start whaling 50-yard field goals,” he said.

Now 38, Elam lifts and stretches meticulously, and kicks just two or three times a week, compared with two or three times a day when he was younger. He uses various ointments to reduce tissue damage and speed recovery, and he visits a chiropractor, a massage therapist and a biomechanics technician.

Such attention to detail distinguishes older kickers. Carney, who entered the N.F.L. in 1987, times his daily warm-up routine to the minute based on the practice schedule. He kicks no more than 25 balls on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Kicking off is more stressful than kicking field goals, so he does not practice that during the week.

“It’s quality versus quantity,” Carney said. “You don’t want to fatigue yourself and pay the price” on game day.

Thomas McGaughey, the Giants’ assistant special teams coach, also worked with Andersen in Kansas City and with Elam in Denver. McGaughey said the difference between a veteran and a younger kicker was evident in their approaches to problems.

Lawrence Tynes, 30, who is on the Giants’ roster but has not played all season, will kick until he feels a problem is corrected, McGaughey said. Carney cannot risk taking extra kicks physically and does not need to mentally.

“He can make the correction on the spot and, bam, there it is,” McGaughey said.

Older kickers have other advantages. Elam’s Falcons and Kasay’s Panthers use a kickoff specialist, sparing them some wear and tear. With family lives and financial security, older kickers find their jobs increasingly less stressful.

“When you’re younger, it’s all about football, all about kicking, all about making that game-winner,” said Stover, who is 12 for 15 this season (80 percent), at the low end of his kicking compatriots. “It becomes paralyzing.”

Kickers often need several years to land steady N.F.L. jobs; half of the 35-and-older kickers were cut early on. But after several seasons, they are difficult to dislodge because coaches know they can cope with pressure.

So coaches let veterans set their own practice agendas, consult them about field-goal range during games and overlook the occasional shank. But the kickers also know that someone younger with a strong leg is a telephone call away and that their next miss may be the one that leads coaches to conclude that the old guy has lost it.

At any moment, management can say: “Hey, it’s been a great career. We’re going to go get someone else,” Hanson said.

So he tells himself: “I’ve been doing this for 17 years. Don’t screw it up now.”

Stefan Fatsis is the author of “A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-foot-8, 170-pound, 43-year-old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL,” about his summer as a place-kicker with the Denver Broncos.

Can he kick? We know what he doesn't do. And $3 M for that is shocking. Keep Phil.

The Older kickers vs average is telling.

The "older vs younger" doesn't do anything for me, because some of those younger guys include those who have lost their jobs because of the fact that they weren't accurate.

Jeff Reed, in Pittsburgh, is an example.

He is 31, and had been a competent and accurate kicker for 8 years. (10th most accurate in NFL history going into this seaosn) Then this year happened. The bottom just fell out.

Maybe the guys who make it to 35+ are different, and the ones who can go to 40+ ..... who knows? All I know is that it just seems more likely that a guy on the wrong side of 35 would seem to be a bigger risk than a younger guy. I don't know if you can tie up a bunch of money in an older player like that.

Maybe I'm wrong.

The Dawsons obviously believe that Texas is "home". They prolly have friends and family there and moving the family to a more permanent location is accepting the inevitable. It's possible or likely that Phil's next contract, whether it's with the Browns or anyone else, may be his last.

Phil and his wife may not want to subject the family to the turmoil of moving from city to city for the next 3 to 5 years. Phil may become a journeyman kicker moving from one team to the next on a seasonal basis.
Best to live in an apartment during the season even if he signs a contract extension with the Browns.

BTW, that kicker in Dallas is not exactly the Rock of Gibraltar.

I don't think you're wrong. What we don't know here is what Dawson is really thinking. Moving his family says a lot though.

He's been a good kicker. Maybe he deserves to make some more. I don't get to decide those things. I just have trouble understanding why money has to be the overriding issue.

Correct,...need more info.

Didn't think we could find a new punter.. but we did..



Keep a eye on the kicker for Nebraska if they don't resign Dawson.

I'd like Dawson to stay and retire a Brown but I don't begrudge the man a better paycheck if he can get one. It's likely going to be his last contract before he has to move into real life and there's nothing wrong with getting what you can while you can.

He wants to kick in the playoffs....something he won't do in Cleveland.

So Dawson is bracing himself for the inevitable and moving his family "home"? That sounds like a good idea to me. He'll ask for the moon and the stars and knows full well he won't get it.

He won us far more games than he cost us. That's the mark of a good kicker. It's a shame he wasn't in a position to win a few more close ones for us. I hope to see him in Cleveland again next year, if the price is right.

I really thought we were going to miss Zastudil,, as it turned out, we really didn't at all..

I believe we'll miss Dawson,, don't want to see him leave. love the guys attitude and consistency.. Would love to see him retire a Brown..

But, I get the feeling he's gone.. The good news is, we found a solid replacement for Zas,, perhaps we can dip into that well again and come up with another to replace Dawson...

Speaking of replacing Zas,, didn't Hodges come from Mangni.. brought him in last season to replace the injured Zas?

How come the Mangini haters never bring that up?