The Miami Dolphins haven't gotten the best from their specialists so far this year, so on Tuesday they held workouts for free agent kickers, and according to NFL insider Jordan Schultz, the team is signing Zane Gonzalez, pending a physical.
Gonzalez, 31, has had stints with the Cleveland Browns
, Arizona Cardinals, Detroit Lions, Carolina Panthers, San Francisco 49ers, Washington Commanders and Atlanta Falcons, making 115-of-142 field goals (81%) and 163-of-171 extra points (95.3%).Miami also had Gonzalez in to compete for the job this offseason, but he suffered an injury in August and landed on injured reserve before he and the team agreed to an injury settlement.
Dolphins kicker Riley Patterson has made just 7 of his 9 field goals (77.8%) and
5 of his 6 extra points (83.3%) this year.
Head coach Jeff Hafley also voiced his displeasure with some of the kickoffs during his media availability on Monday, which may have led to this signing.
"We did try to kick them out of the end zone; that was discussedand just not executed the way that we wanted it to be," Hafley said. "Now fortunately, we covered a bunch of those kicks better than we did on the first time. And yeah, they had a nice return on the big return, obviously we didn't execute it very well. So I would say it's a combination of lack of execution on the big one. Good execution on their part, I don't want to take that away from them. And then on the ensuing kickoffs, yeah, several of them were supposed to be touchbacks and weren't."
This article originally appeared on Dolphins Wire: Dolphins re-signing veteran kicker after cutting him in training camp
