CLEVELAND, Ohio — It was a bad start to a bad day for the Cleveland Browns.
In their 21-14 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday, in which Cleveland went on to likely lose its starting QB for the rest of the season, the Browns were playing with a deficit after the opening kickoff.
It was not what the home crowd wanted to see, as the Browns returned to Huntington Bank Field after three straight weeks on the road. But Bengals receiver Charlie Jones returned it 100 yards for a touchdown, and spoiled that homecoming.
“Kicking for return,” Browns kicker Dustin Hopkins said. “That was the plan, to kick to allow them to return the ball. And then he broke through, and now, he’s a better athlete than I was.”
Jones caught the ball near the right hashmarks, and found a seam around the Cincinnati 30, cutting to the outside.
As he approached the 47, Hopkins was one of the last lines of defense. He got a hand on the receiver‘s arm, but didn‘t finish with a tackle, as Jones continued cutting out towards the right sideline from the numbers. Neither safety D’Anthony Bell or cornerback Tony Brown II were able to finish the play for Cleveland, as Jones scored and gave Cincy an early 7-0 lead.
Hopkins admitted after the game that in the moment, he was thinking about what happened last year in a December regular-season game against the Houston Texans.
In that game, the kicker went all out to try and chase down Texans RB Dameon Pierce on a 98-kick return TD. Hopkins injured his hamstring and was unable to play in Cleveland’s final two regular-season games or their wild card loss to the Texans.
“Absolutely, yeah. No, I thought about it,” Hopkins said. “And so it was a mix of, I wasn’t trying to — I didn’t want him to have an angle to get past me. I knew I probably wasn’t going to chase him down like Houston and just put myself at risk.
“So I just tried to honestly slow his angle down a little bit so hopefully one of my guys could catch up and then kind of make a go. And then if he got past me, I was just going to not chase.”
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It’s hard to argue the rationale, knowing the ripple effect his injury had on the Browns last season.
Punter Corey Bojorquez stepped in for Hopkins in that Houston game, and wound up injuring his quad. In an emergency, the Browns had to use Bell, who kicked in high school, to kickoff the rest of the game.
The Bengals TD was just the first of several unfortunately notable Hopkins moments throughout the afternoon.
The kicker missed a 49-yard field goal attempt wide left going towards the Dawg Pound end of the stadium with 6:28 left in the first quarter.
Then, with 56 seconds to go until halftime, Hopkins sailed an extra-point attempt wide left after Nick Chubb‘s 1-yard touchdown at the opposite end of the stadium, souring a highlight in Chubb’s return game, 398 days after the star running back suffered a gruesome knee injury.
“Honestly, I felt contact was decent on that ball,” Hopkins said of the missed field goal attempt. “Probably cut the ball a little fatter than I’d like, but the contact wasn’t bad. It’s more that the extra-point was a much worse kick.”
What didn’t he like about that one?
“I got to watch the tape, honestly,” he said. “I mean, I know I didn’t contact it where I wanted to and that’s, when you’re not contacting it good, not a lot of stuff goes right. … anytime you don’t contact the ball well where you want to, good stuff usually doesn’t happen. So contact was decent on the first, but the second one, contact wasn’t even close to where I want to be.”
The Browns specialists have been in flux in recent weeks, with longtime long snapper Charley Hughlett suffering a rib injury and going to injured reserve.
Cleveland brought in Bay Village native Rex Sunahara, who also spent a portion of the preseason here, to take over those duties. But Hopkins said his misses Sunday weren’t a result of anything being amiss operationally between him, Sunahara, and Bojorquez as the holder.
“All that is a hundred percent me,” Hopkins said. “Rex and Corey, they’ve done awesome and Charley’s been great since I’ve been here. Yeah, Rex is not the issue. It’s a hundred percent on my shoulders.”
It was Hopkins’ third missed field goal of the season. Last week, he sent a 52-yard attempt wide right against the Philadelphia Eagles. He also missed a 53-yard attempt in Week 3 against the Giants, wide left.
This was his second missed extra-point attempt of the year as well, after pulling one left in Cleveland’s road loss to the Raiders in Week 4.
As the Browns returned to the field towards the end of halftime, Hopkins made a point to take extra reps on Sunday, as Cleveland’s trailed 7-6 instead of leading 10-7, like they would have been if he made both kicks.
“I was working on where I wanted my target line of my eyes to be on the ball, and sometimes you can keep things the exact same of things that work during the week, and sometimes it changes on Sunday,” he said.
“So I was just trying to find that good sight line and obviously I didn’t do good enough today, so I hate that feeling for my teammates, honestly, more than anything, they’re out there putting it all on the line and when I don’t do my end, I hate it for them and I hate it for the fans, so I’m going to do everything I can to be the best I can be.”
Hopkins’ miscues have been surprising, as he helped save the season a year ago after things went south quickly with Cade York, culminating in a disastrous final preseason game in Kansas City. GM Andrew Berry acted quickly, acquiring Hopkins in a trade with the Chargers after he lost a preseason kicking battle to Cameron Dicker.
In 2023, he made 33-of-36 field goals, including all eight of his attempts from 50-plus yards, and made game-winning kicks against the Ravens and Steelers in back-to-back weeks. In Week 7 against the Colts, he made all four of his field goal attempts in a one-point victory, including two from 54 yards and one from 58, his career long.
The Browns repaid Hopkins, for that year — literally — with a three-year, $15.9 million deal, locking him up through 2027. The deal at the time made him the fifth-highest paid kicker in the league at $5.3 million per year.
As it stands this season, Hopkins is 8-of-10 on PATs and 10-of-13 on field goals.
So, was Sunday just one of those days? Or is Hopkins fighting through something mechanical?
“I guess they’re one in the same sometimes,” Hopkins said. “Honestly, week of practice, I felt like I put the work in and sometimes it just doesn’t come to fruition on Sunday. The saying is, hard work doesn’t guarantee success, but at least hopefully it puts you in a position to be successful. And today was one of those days where it didn’t come to fruition.”