Alive and kicking

Ralph Vacchiano

• Last Updated: November 20. 2009 11:48PM UAE / November 20. 2009 7:48PM GMT

Lawrence Tynes kicks yet another field goal for the New York Giants, but he is still looked on as the odd man out by teammates. Jim McIsaac / Getty Images / AFP

Eli Manning’s game-winning touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress at the end of Super Bowl XLII in 2008 was probably the biggest moment in New York Giants history, but it never would have happened without Lawrence Tynes. Two weeks earlier it was his overtime field goal that had sent the Giants to the championship game. Six months later he was almost out of a job.

Such is the life of kickers in the National Football League (NFL).

They’re a tight group of quirky men who live a life just off-centre from the rest of their team, yet often carry the fates of franchises on sides of their feet.

In the last two decades, nearly one quarter of all NFL games were decided by three points or less – just a field goal either way, sometimes in the dying minutes.

It’s odd that a player who is so important to his team is treated like a disposable dish cloth, to be discarded and replaced whenever someone else decides that he’s through. And it’s an even more amazing way to treat kickers when you consider that through the first eight weeks of this NFL season, kickers made up eight of the top 10, and 18 of the 20 top points scorers in the league.

“But a couple of bad weeks, as we’ve seen, and they’re bringing in guys and then you’re gone,” Tynes said.

“I think it’s probably because it’s the easiest position to kind of plug somebody in. It is. It absolutely is the easiest position. You don’t learn plays. You just come in and you kick.”

It’s not that easy, of course – the technique is highly specialised and it takes hours of practice per week and years and years of training – but Tynes does have a point. Kickers don’t need to study the schemes of their opponents or try to learn the tendencies of other players.

Their focus is solely on their own mechanics and what they call “the operation” – the snap of the ball from their centre and the all-important hold.

So they don’t need to spend hours upon hours in meetings like the rest of their teammates, who spend several days each week studying films of their own games looking for flaws and then begin studying future opponents hoping to find an advantage.

And they definitely don’t need to spend several hours in the weight room each day, followed by another two-plus hours on the practice field. In fact, the kicking portion of practice is usually only a few minutes long.

So when the kickers and punters return to the dressing room, well, what do they do in there, exactly?

“We read books,” Tynes said. “Really. And me and Jeff [Feagles, the Giants punter and holder for field goals] look at tapes.

“He’s a coach for his son’s Little League Baseball team and they tape their games, so we kind of watch some of those. It really is a lot of down time.”

That’s why kickers are often not considered part of their own teams – especially when things aren’t really going well. They lead a relatively solitary existence in the league and are expected to know their place.

Just ask Mike Vanderjagt, the former kicker for the Indianapolis Colts, who, one off-season, dared to publicly speak about things other than himself.

After the Colts were eliminated from the 2002 play-offs, Vanderjagt criticised head coach Tony Dungy for being “too mild-mannered” and concluded by saying “I just don’t see us getting better”.

Had that come from a quarterback, receiver or defensive tackle, other players would either supported him or kept their mouths shut. But since it came from a kicker, Colts quarterback Peyton Manning couldn’t let it go.

“Here we are, I’m out at my third Pro Bowl, I’m about to go in and throw a touchdown to Jerry Rice and we’re talking about our idiot kicker who got liquored up and ran his mouth off,” Manning said.

“The sad thing is he’s a good kicker. But he’s an idiot.”

None of Tynes’ teammates called him an “idiot,” of course. In fact they went out of their way to say they consider him part of their team. But they also admitted they sometimes view kickers as a bit … strange.

“Oh yeah, they’re weirdos,” said Giants defensive end Justin Tuck. “All of them. Every last one of them. I think they have to be – strong- legged and quirky. They’d rather talk about golf, or anything other than football.

“They’re always the quiet practical jokers because they’ve got more time than anyone else. So if you’re missing anything from the locker, or if you’ve got ink in your helmet or something like that, they’re normally behind it in some kind of way.”

All that is fun, but it doesn’t overshadow the fact that kickers are important. Year after year they are the NFL’s leading scorers, and it’s rarely even close.

In 2008, Stephen Gostkowski, the kicker for the New England Patriots, led the NFL with 148 points.

Kickers held the top 12 scoring spots and 24 of the top 25. The closest non-kicker to Gostkowski was Carolina Panthers running back DeAngelo Williams, who scored 122 points in the season.

Players will point out that has a lot to do with the NFL’s scoring system – three points for a field goal, plus one extra point attempt after every touchdown scored.

Kickers can kick several field goals per game, while even the highest-scoring non-kickers in the league could go several weeks without a touchdown.

Still, points are points and a team cannot win without them.

Just look how important Tynes was to the Giants’ Super Bowl championship run.

In the NFC championship game in Green Bay, played at icy Lambeau Field with wind-chill temperatures bottoming at minus 23 degrees, Tynes nearly ruined the Giants’ season by failing to convert a 43-yard field goal with less than seven minutes left, or a 36-yard attempt as time expired.

Either miss could’ve cost the Giants the game, but he got a chance at redemption in overtime when he nailed a game-winning 47-yarder.

Tynes was treated as a hero after that game, and deservedly so. Players in every corner of the locker room sang his praises. But he knows how different it could have been if he hadn’t been offered the chance for the overtime kick – or worse, if he missed it – he probably would have been shunned by his teammates.

After all, he was nearly shunned by his coach. Tom Coughlin, the Giants’ head coach, had already screamed at Tynes after the first miss, and he was simply disgusted after the second. So when the chance for a third came up, Coughlin was pondering, calling a play on fourth down and passing up the chance at the field goal.

He wasn’t even looking at Tynes because he wondered if his kicker’s confidence was shattered.

Then he turned around and Tynes was already out on the field.

“I wasn’t going to let him say, ‘Go kick’, “ Tynes said. “He would have had to pull me off the field.”

Whether Coughlin pondered doing that or not, we’ll never know. But he didn’t and Tynes made the kick that secured his place in history.

A few weeks later his reward was a new contract: five years, US$7 million (Dh25.7m). Compare that to the new, seven-year, $106.9m contract the Giants gave quarterback Eli Manning earlier this year – a deal he likely would not have got if he hadn’t won the Super Bowl XLII MVP in a game he would not have even played in if it wasn’t for Tynes.

Not that Tynes is complaining just because the quarterback he helped win a championship will earn more than $100 million more than he will. “That would be nice if kickers were the highest-paid players,” Tynes said. “Most leading scorers in other sports or leading hitters in baseball are the highest-paid. That’s not the case in the NFL. But that’s OK. I’m fine with what I’m making.”

But what about the startling lack of respect for such an important position?

Offensive linemen make exponentially more than kickers around the league, yet they are directly responsible for no points at all.

If the money is not important, shouldn’t someone at least acknowledge how important kickers really are?

“I wouldn’t say we don’t get respect,” Tynes said. “Obviously what these guys do on a week-to-week basis is pretty incredible, how they get ready and come back. I mean, we jog out there sometimes one time a game. So I can understand where they’re coming from.”

Yes, but that one time is so important that it can change the fortunes of franchise and the legacies of men.

Just ask Scott Norwood, who played seven years in the NFL, all with the Buffalo Bills. He made 133 field goals in his career – more than 72 per cent of his attempts – he went to a Pro Bowl, and he scored 670 career points.

But all he’ll ever be remembered for is one miss at the end of Super Bowl XXV, when he missed from 47 yards. Never mind that the Giants had thoroughly outplayed and outcoached a Bills team who were supposed to steamroll their way to a championship that season.

Never mind that the Bills would go on to lose each of the next three Super Bowls, too, and in blowout fashion. The signature event of that Bills’ unfulfilled run was Norwood’s miss.

From that moment on, he was forever associated with the words “wide right”.

Considering how that moment changed Norwood’s life and, some would say, changed the fortunes of the Bills’ franchise, based on that alone, how could teams treat kickers as such afterthoughts?

Michael Koenen, of the Atlanta Falcons, and Shayne Graham, of the Cincinnati Bengals, each will make $2.5m this season, making them the highest-paid kickers in the NFL.

The highest-paid non-kicker? Carolina Panthers defensive Julius Pepers, who’ll make $16.7m.

The first kicker wasn’t taken in the most recent NFL draft in April until the fifth round, when the Dallas Cowboys took David Buehler with the 172nd pick.

Only two others were drafted and both went in the seventh and final round (Pat McAfee to Indianapolis at 222, and Ryan Succop to Kansas City at 256).

Succop, actually, was the last pick of the entire draft - dubbed “Mr Irrelevant”. That, of course, was an unfair title considering the four field goals he kicked in Kansas City’s first win of the season last month.

Irrelevant? In truth, kickers could not be more important.

Which is why it was so stunning for everyone when Tynes, six months after kicking the Giants into Super Bowl XLII, was almost discarded.

He suffered a knee injury in camp and the Giants brought in 44-year-old John Carney as a temporary replacement. But when Tynes was finally healthy, Carney was kicking well so the Giants wouldn’t immediately give their former hero his job back.

So the season after kicking the most important kick in Giants franchise history, Tynes attempted one field goal all season long.

“It keeps you on your toes, that’s for sure,” Tynes said. “And I think that kind of pressure works. There are probably some good kickers who are not in the NFL, so sure, if you don’t have that mindset that you’re going to be replaced.

“You could get into trouble. As a kicker, you have to prove yourself every week in the NFL. Every week.”

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