Things are not going very well for Cade York, the second-year kicker for the Cleveland Browns whom they drafted in the fourth round in 2022. After making only 75 percent of his field goals as a rookie going 24-for-32, he is already off to a slow start in his sophomore campaign.
Having already missed three of six field goal attempts in the Browns’ first three preseason games, including what would have been a game-winner last week, York was stymied yet again in last night’s loss to the Kansas City Chiefs with the opportunity to win the game yet again. It was blocked this time, but it simply goes down as another miss, going 4-for-8 on the preseason overall.
“To be honest, people gave me pats on the back and crap like that, but I hate pity”, he told reporters after the game, via video from the locker room by Camryn Justice. “Pity pisses me off. I want to be a weapon. I know how good I am. That’s been the most frustrating thing the last month, struggling with that. The real games start soon. Just trying to take a running start into the season and just start putting them through all the time”.
York was the only kicker drafted last year, coming out of LSU. He connected on 81.8 percent of his field goal attempts for the Fighting Tigers, including 15 of 18 in 2021, the year before he was drafted. He missed four extra points as a freshman, but none for the remainder of his career.
Historically, drafting a kicker hasn’t really proven to be any less of a crapshoot than any other position. Given that so many kickers go undrafted, you might expect them to have a pretty high hit rate when they do, but it often doesn’t work that way. Take 2020 fifth-round pick Justin Rohrwasser, for example, drafted by the New England Patriots. He never played a down in the NFL.
One thing that should be said is that it’s often overlooked that specialists just as much as any other position in football take time to grow. Punters and kickers and even long snappers get better with experience like everybody else does.
York can still go on to have a successful NFL career as a top kicker in the league. That should go without saying. He does have talent. The Browns also do not have another kicker on the roster, so it doesn’t seem as though they are likely to make any kind of move there, trusting that he will work through his issues and have more success in the regular season. He’s got a couple weeks now to get things right before the real football shows up.
