Washington Football Team: 3 positives and negatives from the preseason so far
By Jonathan Eig
Negative: Dustin Hopkins
If you have been a fan for a while, you can remember both the glory days of Mosely and Lohmiller and the dark days of the revolving door kickers. Dustin Hopkins brought some stability to the position when he arrived, and we are all grateful to him. But kickers are a tempestuous breed and when they start to lose it, they can lose it fast.
The Washington Football Team has given up on young kickers too quickly in the past (AKA – David Akers). Hopkins is no longer young, and he has been slipping for a few seasons now. It has not been a terrible decline, but how confident do you feel when he steps up to an important fourth quarter 45-yarder?
K Dustin Hopkins hits from 34 yards. He was 0-for-2 last week and, as they say in the biz, _needed_ that.
— Sam Fortier (@Sam4TR) August 21, 2021
His misses in the first preseason game were worrisome. And though he made all of his kicks in game two, they were almost equally problematic. Each of his kicks slid just inside the upright. Nothing was dead center. As a practical matter, that means that from five yards further out, those kicks may well sail wide. On a broader level, they speak to a kicker who is not exactly striking the ball with great confidence. He has been a quality kicker for many years now, and perhaps it simply comes down to adjusting to a new snapper this year. But it bears watching.
With all that being said, and still allowing for how meaningless preseason results are, I still want to beat Baltimore this Saturday.
