Ron Rivera says he's sticking with Chris Blewitt "for now" after the kicker had two kicks blocked in Sunday's 17-10 loss to the Broncos.
"The thing everybody [has to understand] is kickers are hard to find, consistent kickers are even harder to find," Rivera told reporters. "Guys that have had success in this league are on teams. There's not a 90 percent guy out there right now that you can just pick up and he's gonna go out and do it."
Rivera had a kicker with an 84 percent success rate in his building in Dustin Hopkins, but released him in favor of Blewitt, who'd had no previous NFL experience prior to making his debut a week ago in Green Bay. Now Hopkins is on the Chargers. Blewitt now has a 40 percent success rate in the NFL.
"I've gone through this," Rivera said. "Go back to my first three years [in Carolina], it took us a little bit before we found Graham Gano. But once we found Graham, we had him where he had a five-year run that was about as good as anybody in the league. In fact, in 2017 he set the accuracy record. So that's a work in progress as anything else. It's just part of unfortunately the growing pains that we're gonna go through as we're trying to reconstruct this, rebuild this and put this into play."
Blewitt has now had three of his first five NFL field goal attempts blocked in just two games with Washington. After a 42-yard kick was blocked last week by the Packers, on Sunday against the Broncos, Blewitt attempted a 45-yarder in the second quarter that was low enough that it caught the lower arm of an outstretched defender at the line.
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Blewitt had another kick — this one a 47-yard attempt — blocked by the Broncos in the fourth quarter. He did have one successful attempt on the day, nailing a kick from 52 yards out to tie the game in the second quarter.
"I would say on the first one, he hit it a little bit too high in the middle of the ball and hit a low one," Rivera explained after reviewing the game tape. "The second one, there was a little bit of penetration. Still, if we don't give up the penetration, the ball probably clears. But again, he hit those two that were tipped probably a little bit in the middle of the ball, as opposed to staying under it."
"When he hit the 52-yarder, he absolutely stroked it," Rivera said. "He didn't try to overkick it. And I think the first two, based on sitting down with Nate and looking at it, he just tried to crush the ball, instead of just going up there and using a nice fluid stroke. It's like a golf swing — the more fluid you are, the better contact you make, the better the ball goes. And that's really what has to happen when he's kicking the football. And his extra point, same thing. He was nice and fluid, he'd stroke the ball and he got the ball clear. So that's something that we've talked to him about and he knows, and he'll continue to work on it."