Jon Wertheim: You guys are scoring a third of the points though. Morten Andersen: It's a great injustice, one of the greatest injustices in the history of mankind. Jon Wertheim: You're one of only two pure kickers in the Football Hall of Fame. Andersen is the second-leading scorer in NFL history, behind another kicker, four-time Super Bowl winner Wdam Vinatieri… and yet. When Andersen drove the Atlanta Falcons into the Super Bowl in 1999, he was so sure he'd nailed his kick, he didn't even bother to watch. And I thought to my- I remember thinking to myself, you know, "They're not driving the car. So I remember standing on the sideline, and all my teammates were on their knees. I would rehearse them in slow motion and real time. Because I had in my mental rehearsals, the night before in the hotel, I- I would do three or four scenarios. Jon Wertheim: Did you feel fear when you walked out? Jon Wertheim: It's like Yogi Berra does kicking. Morten Andersen: I would say 90% of it is mental, and the last 10% is mental. Justin Tucker: If you're not feeling just, like, a little something, like, you know, are you even really living? You know, that's part of the challenge of playing this position at this level is thinking about all that, processing it, compartmentalizing it, putting it away, and then still going out there and doing your job. Even for Justin Tucker, nerves come into play. But then there are wacky Sundays like the one last October, when normally reliable kickers for the Packers and Bengals combined to miss five field goals in the last 10 minutes.Īnd the extra point, once almost automatic, has become more of an adventure since the NFL extended the distance in 2015.Īll those games hinging on the smallest guys on the field, splitting or missing those two uprights? The outcome will depend as much on the mind as on the foot. Here's the real kicker, as it were: across the NFL, more field goals are being made from longer distances with greater accuracy than ever. Jon Wertheim: Is he worth a first-round pick today? Three seconds left, Justin Tucker, the Ravens' 32-year-old kicker, lines up beyond midfield, beyond the tail of theLions' logo… If there were one signature moment from the NFL last season, it might be this…ĭetroit Lions 17, Baltimore Ravens 16. The Ravens had a rough season, but Tucker is on a trajectory, end-over-end, to go down as perhaps the greatest NFL kicker there ever was, in turn elevating the entire position. But then, onto the field jogs Justin Tucker of the Baltimore Ravens, who cleaves the uprights with a mix of power and precision. As we first reported in January, almost half the NFL teams replaced their kickers last season at least once. You can always go out and hire another one. It was Buddy Ryan, the hard-boiled coach, who once growled: kickers are like taxicabs. We speak of kickers, who score about a third of the points in the NFL, but only get a small fraction of the respect. The NFL season is upon us and here's one safe bet: more than a few games will come down to football's great secret hiding in plain sight.
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