What a kick in the gut it is when you’re not wanted, and disrespected.
It’s a blow to your confidence, and it makes you sad.
And so it was with Matt Bahr and Phil Dawson. Both got the cold shoulder, and yet they excelled as kickers for the Browns.
And for that reason, then, they are worthy of being in Part 4 of this Roy Hobbs series of Browns players who came out of nowhere to do big things.
Bahr and Dawson are part of the great lineage of Browns kickers that also includes Pro Football Hall of Famer Lou Groza, Don Cockcroft and Matt Stover.
Bahr played with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1979 and ‘80 before being let go. He was signed by the San Francisco 49ers and then cut early in 1981 after he struggled. The Browns quickly signed him and he held down the kicking job through the end of 1989. He was the guy who delivered almost every big kick for those Browns teams that competed for Super Bowl berths through the last half of that decade.
Indeed, the Steelers and 49ers didn’t want him, but the Browns were only too happy to take him. It solidified a kicking situation that ran into trouble after the Browns cut Cockcroft in the 1981 training camp and replaced him with Dave Jacobs, who failed miserably.
Dawson, who might be the best kicker the Browns have ever had, spent the 1998 season on the practice squad of the New England Patriots. The Browns got him the following year, in 1999, when they came back into the NFL as an expansion team, but head coach Chris Palmer just didn’t like him and made no bones about it. Even when Dawson kicked a field goal as time expired to beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh in 1999, the coach still didn’t give him his due. That’s ironic, and just plain wrong, because there was an incredible lack of miscommunication on the Cleveland sideline as the Browns readied for that kick, and if Dawson had not gotten it off and the Browns had lost the game, which nearly happened, it’s possible that Palmer might have been fired because the Browns were already struggling mightily.
By the end of his career in Cleveland at the completion of the 2012 season, when team President Joe Banner stupidly allowed him to walk in free agency, Dawson had etched his name into the Cleveland record books. And again, he almost didn’t make it out of that rookie year, because if Palmer could’ve found anyone else who could kick, he would’ve sent Dawson packing.
And then, the way it turned out with Dawson in his outstanding career, Chris Palmer would’ve been kicking himself.
NEXT: Not defiant, but Defiance.
Steve King
