Newnam et al. [1] reported experiments showing that the angular dependence of 351-nm laser damage thresholds in HfO²/SiO² multilayer dielectric reflectors was much weaker than even the 1/cosθ expected from simple geometric fluence dilution. Several plausible explanations were suggested, but none were convincing. We propose a simple geometric model based on a cylindrical form for the coating defect responsible for damage initiation. We have measured 248-nm damage thresholds for bare fused silica, evaporated aluminium films, and HfO²/SiO² and Al²O³/SiO² dielectric reflectors at angles out to 85°. The measured data agree well with our simple model.