This is not like instant oatmeal, or a TV show in which the entire storyline plays out in just a half-hour and everything ends well.

Indeed, it can take time — perhaps even an inordinate amount of time — for young pro football players, including and especially kickers, to develop, mature and produce. That’s particularly true in Cleveland.

We need to keep that in mind regarding the struggles of second-year Browns kicker Cade York.

It wasn’t until near the end of his fifth season — yes, that’s right, his fifth season, a veritable lifetime today — that Browns kicker Don Cockcroft finally broke through. It came as the Browns edged the Pittsburgh Steelers 26-24 on Nov. 19, 1972 when, in a cold rain on a muddy field at Cleveland Stadium, he booted a 26-yard field goal with eight seconds left from the exact same spot he had missed only two minutes earlier. A photo of his reaction — bent over, overcome with emotion, while holder Mike Phipps jubilantly raises both arms — was used on the cover of a book about the greatest games in Browns history.

Cockroft would say years later that the kick dramatically transformed his career and, in a lot of ways, his life, giving him bounds of confidence that he could hit a kick from anywhere on any field at any time, and he did.

Matt Stover had problems as a rookie in 1991, including in a late-season game against the Houston Oilers when, with the Browns trailing 19-17, he badly shanked a 19-yard field goal — a chip-shot, a virtual layup — in the closing moments that would’ve won the game. He hit it so poorly that it went over the pylon on the goal line. It was a sideways kick, unthinkable for a pro.

But a young, first-year head coach by the name of Bill Belichick — perhaps you’ve heard of him — doubled down on his support of Stover and stood solidly behind him.

Then there’s Phil Dawson. For whatever reason, Browns head coach Chris Palmer hated the kicker. Dawson, a rookie, kicked the game-winner, a 39-yard field goal into a stiff wind as time expired, as the expansion-year Browns beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh 16-15 on Nov. 14, 1999 to give them their second — and last — win of the year, yet even that did not please Palmer. In fact, nothing Dawson did seemed to convince Palmer that he was the guy. It wasn’t until his third or even fourth season, after Butch Davis arrived as head coach in 2001, that Dawson began believing in himself, and those in charge began believing in him, and he really secured the kicking job.

Kicking in Cleveland is tough. With all due respect to the people over in Pittsburgh, who believe that the stadium formerly known as Heinz Field is the toughest place in the NFL in which to kick, it pales in comparison to Cleveland.

So, it takes a gritty guy to be successful on the shores of Lake Erie. The wind, often swirling, is terrible. The kicker has to be incredible — and incredibly determined and resilient — to overcome it.

As such, then, the Browns are giving Cade York a chance — and then some — to prove that he can do it, and that’s exactly the right thing for them to do.

For if Don Cockroft, Matt Stover and Phil Dawson had not been given enough time to prove themselves, then they never would have earned their place among the storied lineage of great Browns kickers.

By Steve King