Redskins’ Suisham on tenuous footing

Shaun Suisham’s 48-yard field goal against Jacksonville last week was an insignificant footnote to an insignificant preseason game, at least concerning the score. Get it over with, make the final cuts and let’s start the real season.

For Suisham, however, the implications were highly significant. If the kick did not allow him to keep his job with the Washington Redskins, it gave him, as Joe Theismann noted on the telecast, “a leg up” in his competition with Dave Rayner. (Theismann quickly apologized for the pun.)

Both had few chances. Suisham made a 20-yarder and missed a 52-yard attempt before his kick against the Jaguars. Rayner made his only attempt, from 25 yards. Their kickoffs were close, as were their practice kicks.

“I would say the field goal last week was pretty important,” Suisham said the other day. “I’m glad I had an opportunity to make it.”

Now he has an opportunity to establish longevity with a team that lately hasn’t had much at the position. If he ends a fourth straight season as the Redskins’ kicker, it would be the longest streak since Chip Lohmiller kicked from 1988 to 1994.

For the better part of two decades, the Redskins knew who their kicker would be. Mark Moseley, the only kicker to be named NFL MVP, held the job from 1974 to 1985. After a few years came Lohmiller, who twice led the league in field goals.

Since then, the Redskins have held more auditions than “American Idol.” They used six kickers in the five seasons after the departure of Lohmiller, who signed with New Orleans in 1995. Since 2000, the team has used 12 kickers - a list that includes Ola Kimrin and James Tuthill, Kris Heppner and Jose Cortez. Ethan Albright, the long snapper since 2001, said he cannot remember them all.

“It was a nightmare,” he said of the constant turnover.

Ever since Suisham made eight of nine field goals to win the job from an injured John Hall and replacement Nick Novak in 2006, the turnover among kickers has calmed down (although Hunter Smith is the fourth punter in three years), at least for now.

But who knows what the season will bring?

“There’s a lot of kickers out there out of work,” special teams coach Danny Smith said. “You’d be shocked at the number of calls I get. … On a Monday, if we miss a field goal on a Sunday, I get 10 calls. I get calls from agents [and] players; I get calls that you can’t believe. Some of these [kickers] would be surprised about guys that they think are their buddies.”

In 2007, after winning the job the year before, Suisham made 82.9 percent of his kicks, but he never tried one from 50 yards or longer. In 2008, Suisham missed three of four from 50-plus and fell to 72.2 percent overall. Paging Mr. Rayner.

Rayner knows all about the tenuous, itinerant life of a kicker. He has played for three teams and has worked out with three others since he kicked for Green Bay in 2006 (he started out with Indianapolis the year before). The Packers drafted Mason Crosby the following spring, Rayner was released and his life has become a perpetual tryout.

“It’s a position where, if you’ve got a job, sometimes you still don’t want to unpack your bags,” Olindo Mare said in 2007 after he was traded from Miami, where he kicked for 10 seasons, to New Orleans. “And if you’re out of work, you always want to keep a bag packed with your cleats and workout stuff ready to go, because you never know when a team is going to call and want you to come [for an audition]. It’s certainly not the most secure livelihood, you know?”

Once a kicker gets established, it can turn into a lifetime post. But Jason Hanson (17 years with Detroit), John Kasay (13 in Carolina) and a few others are exceptions. Turnover remains rampant. More than half of the kickers in the league - 17 - have been with their teams for three years or less.

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