Browns Select Cade York

    The Cleveland Browns have been unable to replace Phil Dawson as their kicker since Dawson left in 2012 and they have tried to draft replacements that resulted in failure, so it wasn't a surprise that the team tried again by picking LSU kicker Cade York in the fourth round this weekend.

Cleveland drafted Zane Gonzalez in the seventh round in 2017 and Austin Seibert in the fifth in 2019 and even though both are still active with other teams (Gonzalez with Carolina and Seibert with Detroit) neither was especially successful as Browns.

York had been connected to the Browns by many draft evaluators with division rival Cincinnati drafting Evan McPherson to great success last year and Baltimore having perhaps a Hall of Famer in Justin Tucker and Cleveland's Chase McLaughlin connecting only 72.5 percent of field goal attempts (Worst in the league), the Browns were expected to look seriously at York or second-rated kicker Cameron Dicker of Texas at some point during the draft.

York kicked fifteen field goals of over fifty yards in his career at LSU, including his famous fifty-seven-yard kick through a deep fog to defeat sixth-ranked Florida in 2020.

York was fifty-four of sixty-six in his three years at LSU and seems to check all the boxes but who truly knows when it comes to kickers.

Even the most heralded booters discover that their resume means nothing under NFL pressure and kicking at a home field which is one of the most difficult in the league for kickers makes selecting kickers a "you never know" proposition for any team located in the north.

While I am all for the selection of York and think the Browns need to kick trying to address the problem at kicker, I can't say that I fully know that York will be the answer.

I liked Gonzalez when the Browns drafted him, and I thought Siebert was overdrafted when Cleveland selected him and neither proved to be the answer.

The only answer with kickers in Cleveland is that we just don't know.

I do know this- I would call Phil Dawson, cut him a check as a consultant, and have Dawson available for York to converse with and even walk the field together with various tips for York to learn from the one player that had success kicking consistently in that stadium.

I still have four more Browns to discuss and the Stevenson-Valdez fight for the boxing challenge to write, so I'll be working on those over the next day or so.