Special opener for Dawson

09.02.2008

Don't kick him.

He's just being honest.

"I grew up a huge Dallas Cowboys fan," Browns kicker Phil Dawson, who was raised in Dallas, said Monday as the team began preparations for Sunday's regular-season opener against his boyhood team at Cleveland Browns Stadium. "It's no different than the kids around here growing up as Browns fans.

"We had season tickets to the Cowboys. I remember all the great teams they had through the 1990s. Though I was pretty young at the time, I remember sitting on my dad's lap when Dwight Clark made The Catch against the Cowboys (to win the 1981 NFC Championship Game). I remember all those things."

Just as Browns fans remember the 1964 NFL Championship Game victory over the Baltimore Colts, the Kardiac Kids, the AFC Championship Games against the Denver Broncos following the 1986 and '87 seasons and Eric Metcalf's two touchdowns on punt returns to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1993.

Dawson, one of the greatest kickers in Browns history, played at Lake Highlands High School in Dallas, where former Browns and now Baltimore Ravens kicker Matt Stover also starred. He went to the University of Texas, and when it became clear he had a shot at the NFL -- he was a first-team All-America pick as a senior for the Longhorns -- his dreams of someday playing for the Cowboys became much more real.

"But when I talked to Stover, I learned that the NFL was a business and that I should feel blessed to be playing for any team," Dawson said.

That first team was the Oakland Raiders, with whom he spent part of training camp and the preseason of his true rookie campaign of 1998. Waived by the Raiders late in the preseason that year, he was claimed by the New England Patriots, waived again at the completion of the preseason and then signed to New England's practice squad, where he remained for the entire year.

The expansion Browns signed him on March 25, 1999 as they tried to acquire as many players as they could, hoping they'd find a couple keepers in the bunch. They got exactly that in Dawson, the only member of that expansion team still with the Browns.

As it turned out, fate smiled on Dawson right away. As he tried to do enough to make the team in a crowded field of kickers, none of whom had a real NFL resume at that point, he kicked the deciding field goal in overtime to provide the new Browns with a 20-17 victory in their debut, the annual Pro Football Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio.

And did we mention that it came against the Cowboys?

"Yeah, that was pretty cool," he said.

But, as Dawson pointed out, the Browns haven't seen much of the Cowboys since. Only once, in fact, that coming in Week 2 of the 2004 regular season when the Browns fell 19-12 in Dallas.

"That was pretty cool, too, to get to play in Texas Stadium as a pro," Dawson said. "They play a lot of high school games there, but to play on that field as a member of an NFL team was something special for me."

But now it's 2008, and while big things are forecast for the Cowboys, the Browns also have lofty aspirations -- legitimate ones -- for the first time in years.

"I'm not saying we're not aware of what's being said and written about us and the expectations, but inside this locker room, those things aren't being discussed," Dawson said. "We'll play all 16 games and see how we end up, but our focus right now is on the Dallas Cowboys."

Just where it was for a kid growing up in Texas some years back.