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Cade York prepares to kick during rookie minicamp May 13. (Brian Fisher – For The News-Herald)
By JEFF
SCHUDEL | jschudel@news-herald.com | The News-Herald
PUBLISHED: May
14, 2022 at 3:05 p.m. | UPDATED: May 14, 2022 at 3:06 p.m.
Phil
Dawson kicked for the Browns from 1999-2012, and then his former team spent the
next 10 years fruitlessly trying to find a reliable replacement.
At last,
the search might be over.
Two
hundred sixty-two players were selected in the 2022 draft, and only one was a
kicker. The Browns used pick 124 to draft Cade York from LSU. They took him
with one of the three picks acquired from Houston when they traded the 44th
overall pick to the Texans.
Special teams coordinator Mike Priefer took
York to FirstEnergy Stadium on May 13, the first day of rookie minicamp, so
York could get acclimated to kicking on the Browns’ home turf. The weather
conditions will be much different in November and December, but York had to
start his pro career somewhere.
“It was
awesome,” York said before the rest of the team practiced at the team’s
training complex in Berea. “I got to get in there and see what the wind is like
and kicked a few balls. It was pretty nice (weather), nicer than most
games at LSU, honestly, so I’m excited to see what it’s like when it’s windy.”
York said he spoke with Dawson for
about 30 or 40 minutes by phone May 6. After 14 years in a Browns uniform, in
which he scored 1,271 points, Dawson kicked four additional seasons with the
49ers and then two more with the Cardinals. Dawson’s wisdom is something a
coach can’t teach.
“I
think that’s great,” Browns coach Kevin Stefanski said after practice May 13.
“Phil has been an outstanding ambassador for our team and certainly our
specialists. To be able to connect with Phil and talk through FirstEnergy
Stadium is an important part of it.”
Dawson,
47, has gone full circle. After living in Nashville for two years, he and his
family now live in Austin, Texas, where Dawson made his mark kicking for the
Texas Longhorns. Dawson is in his first year as head football coach of Hyde
Park School in Austin.
“He kind of went through some of the
stuff that he did, plant cleats, talked about the wind a little bit, different
types of conditions,” York said. “Everyone has their own style of going about
things, but it was cool to pick his brain about a few things.
“He just
mentioned that there are going to be days that are tough. You just got to go
out there and hit a true ball. You’ve got to be OK with not hitting it right
down the middle every time, just have confidence in what you do and not every
kick is going to be the same. He said people would be mentioning the flag.”
Kicking was and remains a science to
Dawson. Kicking toward the goal post in front of
the Dawg Pound at the eastern end of FirstEnergy Stadium challenges all
kickers, but Dawson learned the best way to judge the wind speed was to watch a
flag in the southwest corner of the end zone.
“Early
in my time in Cleveland, I noticed that days when the wind was out of the
southwest, it was a brutal day to kick,” Dawson told Dawgs by Nature in 2020.
“I needed some sort of gauge of how hard the wind was entering the southwest
tunnel of the stadium.
“I asked
Chris Powell, our grounds crew leader, if he could get some sort of flag up.
The next home game, there it was. I believe it’s still there to this day, but
with the stadium renovations, I don’t think that Southwest tunnel is as big as
it used to be.”
Dawson
revealed he also got some help from an unlikely source — a former Secret
Service sniper who worked security for the Browns.
“Ken
Rundle, former Secret Service sniper, taught me that the angle a flag is
blowing, if you divide by four, that’s the approximate wind speed. I took his
word for it,” he said.
Dawson wanted to stay with the Browns
after 2012, but rather than sign him to an extension, former Browns head of
football operations Joe Banner let Dawson leave through free agency in 2013.
Had he stayed with the Browns, even for only 2013, Dawson would have broken Lou
Groza’s franchise scoring record of 1,349 points. Dawson is only 78 points shy
of the record.
The list of kickers in the post-Dawson
era is long. Billy Cundiff kicked in 2013 and 2014.
Travis Coons was the kicker in 2015. Cody Parkey was one and done in 2016, and
then Zane Gonzalez kicked in 2017. Greg Joseph was the kicker in 2018.
Austin
Seibert, drafted by the Browns in the fifth round in 2019, handled the kicking
duties his rookie year and was cut after one game in 2020 — Stefanski’s first
year as head coach. Parkey returned to Cleveland and kicked the final 15 games
of 2020 and then was beaten out by Chase McLaughlin last summer. McLaughlin was
waived after York was drafted.
