Position Group Breakdown 2021: Specialists and Returners

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July 22, 2021

by Steve Thomas

This is our next installment of our annual, ongoing Redskins Washington position group breakdown series.  Here’s the list of our previous breakdowns:

This column will cover the specialists, then will briefly address potential returners.

Departures

Nick Sundberg

Arrivals

Cameron Cheeseman

Returning players

Dustin Hopkins

Tress Way

Analysis

Cheeseman: This offseason, Washington let longtime long snapper Nick Sundberg go without being re-signed.  Then, the team traded a 2022 5th round pick to NFC East rival Philadelphia Eagles for the 41st pick in round 6 (225th overall) and the 12th pick in round 7 (240th overall) in the 2021 draft.  Washington used that pick to draft Sundberg’s replacement, Michigan long snapper Cameron Cheeseman,

Cheeseman, who is 6’4” and 237 pounds, is a native of New Albany, Ohio.  He spent five years at the University of Michigan and took over the long snapping role in his 2017 sophomore season.  Cheeseman elected to sit out the 2020 season, but played 39 games between 2017 and 2019.  The Hog Sty interviewed nationally recognized long snapping coach Chris Rubio back in April (check out his website here), and Rubio named Cheeseman as his #3 snapper in the 2021 class.  One thing of note is that Cheeseman has good size by long snapping standards and could therefore be more of a positive in punt coverage than some other NFL snappers.

Hopkins: Dustin Hopkins has been with the team since 2015.  Washington chose to re-sign him this offseason, but only gave him a one year contract, which seems to indicate that head coach Ron Rivera may be a bit frustrated with him.  2020 was Hopkins’ worst season of his career, but not by much – he made 27 of 34 field goal attempts, which is 79.4%.  Hopkins had made 124 of 146 attempts between 2015 and 2019, for a 84.9% average.  What this basically means is that he missed one more kick in 2020 than his career average.  That deficit came between 40 and 49 yards.  Prior to 2020, he had made 36 of 44 field goal attempts between those distances, which is 81.8%.  Last year, he made 13 of 17 between 40 and 49 yards, which is 76.5%, which is essentially one miss more than his career average.  Hopkins was right at his career averages for every other distance.  He made 2 of 4 over 50 yards, as compared to his average of 52.4%, and he only missed 1 kick under 40, going 12 for 13.  Certainly, Hopkins started a bit slow last year, with 4 of his misses coming in the first seven games of the season, and only 3 misses in the last nine games.  What this means is that contrary to the views of most fans, Hopkins didn’t fall off of a cliff in 2020 and is more or less the same ole’ Dustin we’ve always had.  Last October, I did a statistical analysis of Hopkins as compared to other kickers who’ve had long tenures with their teams, and Hopkins was basically right in the middle of the group (click here to read) – in other words, he’s a pretty good kicker, and consistently “pretty good” is still hard to find. That’s why the team re-signed him.  Give Hopkins a break.

Way:  Tress originally came to Washington in 2016 and received a contract extension in 2019 that will keep him with the team through 2024.  Way’s 2020 season wasn’t quite as good as 2019, which was the best of his career, but he still averaged 48.0 yards per punt in 73 attempts, ranked fifth in the NFL by team average.  Way is 31 years old, so he won’t last forever, but there’s no reason to expect a dropoff in 2021.

As a group, Washington is fortunate to have had talented, solid, long term performers at kicker and punter.  We’ll see if Cheeseman can perform at the NFL level, but if Chris Rubio’s opinion is to be trusted, he should be just fine.

Kick returners

The sad fact is that the rule changes implemented in recent years have severely limited the impact of kick returners.  Regardless, Danny Johnson had the starting job in 2020, and he made 26 returns for 573 yards, for an average of 22.0 yards per return.  Johnson was on injured reserve for most of 2019, so Steven Sims Jr had the job that season and averaged 25.6 yards per return on 32 attempts.  Greg Stroman and Johnson both had returns in 2018, with Johnson averaging 23.6 yards per return and Stroman at 18.3.  The other realistic candidate is Isaiah Wright.  He was a regular, quality returner in college but has only had two returns in the NFL and has been terrible at punt returns.  It’s possible that special teams coach Nate Kazcor allows a few more players to try out, but the bottom line is that fans shouldn’t expect this to all of a sudden become a strength out of nowhere.

Punt returners

Kazcor spoke to the media in early June and named newcomer DeAndre Carter, Wright, Sims Jr, rookie Dax Milne, and Johnson as the players who would get the first crack at the punt returner job.  Kazcor also mentioned Adam Humphries, but with Humphries expected to have a major role on offense, the team may not want to risk him on special teams.  I wrote a long and detailed breakdown of this group shortly after Kazcor’s comments, so please click here to read it.