If George Allen was such a special teams guru...

[Jay Z]

Perhaps Knight convinced Allen to give him another chance in 1973 because he'd closed the year strong in 1972. Knight started the year 9 for 24, then closed 12 for 14 (including playoffs.) The playoffs at least got Knight up to borderline territory at 55% for the year. Plus, Knight was lucky enough to be slumping when the Redskins were off to a 11-1 start.

The top 20 kickers in FG percentage all returned to the same teams in 1973. #21 was 6 for 11 Happy Feller, who played part of 1973 before being cut. #22 Bill Bell was beat out by #10 draft choice Nick Mike-Mayer. #23 Mac Percival returned, but was only active for 4 games in favor of Mirro Roder. Knight was #24. #25 was Jim O'Brien, who did not return to the Colts; nor did Boris Shlapak. O'Brien followed Don McCaffrey to Detroit for his single season there. The Patriots did not have a qualifier; Charlie Gogolak went 6 for 8 and got hurt. Gogolak was cut in 1973 in favor of Jeff White.

Mark Moseley came back to the Oilers' camp in 1973 but failed his physical with a back injury. There were four other kickers drafters along with Mike-Mayer, including the Redskins' Mike Wedman; Mike-Mayer was the only one to play in the NFL.

So there weren't a lot of great options out there for the Redskins outside Mike-Mayer. The other replacements, Roder, George Hunt, Jeff White, and Bill McClard, didn't have long NFL careers.

[ChrisBabcock]

PFR is wrong, multiple newspaper accounts show that the Redskins first touchdown in the 10/29/72 game against the Giants is followed by (kick failed).

PFR just has Larry Brown 7 yard pass from Billy Kilmer listed with nothing in parenthesis after that in regards to the XP. I've seen them do that before with missed extra points for whatever reason, to not even bother to mention if it were a kick failed or kick blocked, etc.

[JohnTurney]

Interestingly, Knight later blamed Allen for forcing him to use Richie Petibon as his holder: "He thought he was doing something good and it led to the end of my career." The use of Petibon was supposedly Allen's superstition, which I assume means that Petibon held for Bruce Gossett while with the Rams.

Knight's 1973 struggles were reportedly because of a leg injury, which he felt Allen didn't take into consideration.

Eddie Meador was the holder for the Gossett. Petitbon was the holder for David Ray in 1970...Maybe Meador did it some that season, too, but Meador was a good holder for Rams ...