Sunday’s slate of games featured five game-winning field goals as time expired in the fourth quarter, including one by Browns kicker Dustin Hopkins.
Hopkins’ 40-yard kick gave the Browns a 33-31 win and capped a major comeback after Cleveland fell behind the Ravens by 15 points in the second half. It also came after Hopkins missed an extra point that would have tied the game after cornerback Greg Newsome II’s interception return for a touchdown earlier in the quarter.
After the game, Hopkins said “everybody had my back” after the missed extra point but that he felt like he was being celebrated for correcting a problem of his own creation.
“I feel a bit like an arsonist that put out his own fire and then gets a pat on the back,” Hopkins said, via Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com.
The Browns would have still needed more points to win the game with the extra point, so Hopkins might have had the chance to play the hero without his brief trip into goat territory. That would have robbed him of a good quip at the end of the game, though, and we can all be happy that things didn’t play out that way.
