Washington Football Team: Ron Rivera’s assessment of kicking situation is disappointing

If the Washington Football Team has any hope of repeating as NFC East champs, its special teams production will have to improve significantly.

Whether it be the kicking or return game, Washington got very little help from its special teams unit last season. The group ranked 21st in yards per kick return (20.8), 27th in yards per punt return (5.3), and 23rd in field goal percentage (79.4%).

The Football Team is hopeful its return game will improve, but fans currently have mixed feelings about the field goal unit, and rightly so.

After all, kicker Dustin Hopkins missed both of his field goal attempts (40 and 50 yards) against the Patriots on Thursday night.

As a result, the entire fan base, and even some pundits, are advocating for Washington to sign another kicker to put Hopkins under pressure.

Despite that, and Hopkins clearly lacking confidence, Ron Rivera expressed confidence in his kicker while speaking to the media on Monday.

Ron Rivera’s comments on Dustin Hopkins are disappointing.

Well, that’s not the news we were hoping for.

In most circumstances, bailing on your kicker after one preseason game would be irrational…and maybe franchise malpractice. However, if Thursday was any indication, we are running on Year 3 of Hopkins being unreliable in field goal situations.

Let’s compare his stats from the last three years, shall we?

• 2018: 89.7 FG%, 89% from beyond 50 yards, 92.6% extra-point percentage
• 2019: 83.6 FG%, 75% from beyond 50 yards, 95.5% extra-point percentage
• 2020: 79.4 FG%, 50% from beyond 50 yards, 93.8% extra-point percentage

Do we really need to say anything else? We’re not asking for the Football Team to kick Hopkins to the curb, but can Rivera and the front office at least bring someone in to make him feel like his starting job isn’t unassailable?

We get wanting to maintain a player’s confidence, but coaching Hopkins with kid gloves is the last WFT needs with the standards they’ve set for themselves.

Perhaps Rivera and Co. are giving Hopkins the benefit of the doubt given how he performed down the stretch last season? From Week 12 on, he drilled field goals at a 93.75% clip, including 100% on attempts in the 40-49 yard range.

That’s the only excuse we can think of, and it’s a valid one.

We also saw Rivera hint that the chemistry might be off with 2021 sixth-rounder Cameron Cheeseman taking over as new long-snapper, but we’re buying that with a pinch of salt until we see a wonky snap.

Perhaps we need to give the Football Team’s kicking game some time to gel before we can overly criticize Hopkins. However, it still would’ve been nice to see Rivera at least pretend like his  performance on Thursday was unacceptable.

Washington Football Team: 3 players who earned Week 1 playing time in preseason opener

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