CLEVELAND ― There was a lesson Andre Szmyt learned long ago as a kicker that has served him well in his year-plus with the Browns. It's just easier to move on than to dwell on the bad moments.
A week ago, Szmyt had a bad moment when he missed a point-after kick in the Browns' Week 5 loss at the New York Jets. Late in the fourth quarter of their game against the Baltimore Ravens Oct. 18, he had another one when he just pulled a 48-yard field goal that could've given Cleveland the lead to the left.
However, there would be another chance for Szmyt. This time, the kicker would connect on a 37-yard field goal with no time on the clock to give the Browns a 13-10 win over the Ravens, his fourth career game-winning field goal and second this season.
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"Fourth game winner, it feels pretty good," said Szmyt, who had a string of 25 consecutive field goals, including 11 in a row this season, snapped with the miss. "But no, I just try to live in the moment, try to enjoy it with the guys. A lot of guys came up to me I hear the fans when I'm in the net, 'We believe in you, we believe in you' and like, that's all the support I got. And that means a lot. Obviously, the trust that everybody has in me top down. It feels good and allows me to go out there without nerves and just go out there and do my job."
Even Szmyt's game-winner required him to "flush it" a bit. The Browns initially lined up for a 42-yard kick with two second remaining, but the kick was blocked by Baltimore's Keyon Martin.
Martin, though, had jumped the snap and was flagged for being offsides. That moved the ball five yards closer, while giving the Browns one more untimed down to try again.
This time, Szmyt was true, setting off another celebration in Cleveland. He had done the same thing the last home game, an Oct. 1 "Thursday Night Football" game against the Pittsburgh Steelers where he made a career-long 56-yarder with 10 seconds remaining to win.
"Yeah, honestly, going that way, I thought it was a left-right wind," Szmyt said. "So I tried to play it more left, kind of like I did the Steelers kick a couple weeks ago, and it just stayed left, you know, So I was like, OK. whatever. You can see kind of on the last kick, it kind of has that little bit of left to right kind of fade to it, which is what I expected on the last one. But you flush it, you look at what the wind's doing and kind of move on."
The Browns' specialists have been in "move on" mode since the loss to the Jets. The loss, the only one for the Browns in the last five weeks, had multiple fourth-quarter special-teams issues which led directly to the defeat.
Szmyt's missed PAT came after the Browns had taken a 12-10 lead with 6:15 remaining. The biggest one came with 4:01 remaining when punter Corey Bojorquez could corral a high snap of a rain-soaked ball from Rex Sunahara that New York recovered at the Cleveland 23, which they turned into the go-ahead Braelon Allen touchdown.
Those three, a week later, would combine on the perfect ending. Sunahara snapping to Bojorquez, who held the ball for Szmyt to make the game-winning kick.
"It was great," Bojorquez said. "We are pretty good though at compartmentalizing everything. So like every week's just a new week. Like we don't ever feel like we got a makeup or something. It's just really down to every snap that we get. It's just separate from the rest."
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ. Sign up for Browns Insider newsletter at https://profile.beaconjournal.com/newsletters/browns-insider/
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Andre Szmyt's flushes and forgets miss to make Browns' game-winner
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