{"id":393716,"date":"2025-09-24T16:54:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T16:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/393716\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T16:54:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T16:54:17","slug":"from-fans-wanting-him-cut-to-hero-browns-now-have-an-afc-special-teams-player-of-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/393716\/","title":{"rendered":"From fans wanting him cut, to hero: Browns now have an AFC Special Teams Player of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the Cleveland Browns\u2019 home-opening loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, fans were calling for rookie kicker Andre Szmyt to be cut. He missed an extra point and a short field goal with about two minutes to go, which proved to be the difference in a 17-16 loss. The Browns stuck with him, and teammates rallied behind him, including veteran quarterback Joe Flacco indicating that he was going to spend more time with him.<\/p>\n

For now, it all paid off. With the Browns being shut out 10-0, they ended up pulling off a crazy 13-10 win over the Green Bay Packers this past Sunday. That included Szmyt accounting for 7 of those points: a 35-yard field goal with with 3:38 remaining, an extra point with 3:01 remaining, and then the game-winning 55 yarder as time expired. For his effort, Szmyt was just named the AFC Special Teams Player of the Week:<\/p>\n

The play-on-words with Szmyt\u2019s last name is already catching on, and that includes us having a brand new t-shirt available from BreakingT<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hopefully, Szmyt can keep it up. Even though he struggled in Week 1, I attested that it was still a to be determined scenario with him. Dustin Hopkins had season-long struggles that he couldn\u2019t get over last year, but the team still gave him a shot this training camp. Once he continued to miss kicks, the rookie won the job. It would have been easy to cut him after the first week and sign a veteran kicker, and I think it would have come down to that had he botched a few more short kicks. The way his teammates rallied around him is commendable too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the Cleveland Browns\u2019 home-opening loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, fans were calling for rookie kicker Andre Szmyt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[36408,86,256,85,54,2337,37256,7,345,562,6,582],"class_list":{"0":"post-393716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-browns","8":"tag-andre-szmyt","9":"tag-browns","10":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","11":"tag-cleveland","12":"tag-cleveland-browns","13":"tag-clevelandbrowns","14":"tag-dustin-hopkins","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-green-bay-packers","17":"tag-joe-flacco","18":"tag-nfl","19":"tag-the-browns"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115260323591562465","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}