Kickers Are a Different Breed

Do you stroke them when their stroke is off? Do you kick them when they are kicking poorly? Do you ignore them when another avenue, regardless how small it might be, presents itself?

Usually, if you are an NFL coach, you simply pat the placekicker encouragingly, send him onto the field and pray.

“I want a guy out there who has been through it and knows just what he has to do,” says Bill Parcells, long noted as a strong supporter of veteran kickers when he was coaching the New York Giants. “I want a guy who blocks out everything except kicking that ball through the uprights and getting out of there.”

Parcells had several such kickers, particularly Raul Allegre and Matt Bahr, who helped him win Super Bowls. Throughout the NFL, you will find them: Nick Lowery, Gary Anderson, Morten Andersen, Jeff Jaeger, Norm Johnson, Tony Zendejas. Reliability is their calling card, which is why they are called upon with such regularity with games on the line.

How do they do it? How do they handle the pressure of decisive last-second field goals? How do they last so long in a position so insecure?

“Maybe you have to be a little strange and off-center,” says Lowery, Kansas City’s kicker for a dozen seasons. Lowery is the NFL’s alltime field goal percentage leader at 79.33, well ahead of Andersen and Anderson. “People forget about you until it’s fourth down and you’re running out there to kick with the game on the line.”

Every placekicker has his own way of preparing for such critical spots. Some pace the sideline, not watching the action on the field. Others endlessly practice their “swing”--many kickers liken the process to a golfer’s preparation for a big shot, thus the repeated reference to a “swing.”

Some are constantly into the game, rooting along with their teammates, listening in on coaching strategy.

Generally, though, they want to be alone when their turn is approaching.

“You have to be prepared completely before you go out there,” says Bahr, whose kicking was crucial to the Giants’ run to the 1990 title. “You have to establish a routine, whether it means pacing the sideline and envisioning the kick or just practicing or whatever. You have to make yourself comfortable in what can be a very uncomfortable situation.

“And you have to be confident.”

Sometimes, that confidence is nearly impossible to hold onto. Allegre was out of football last December, back home in Texas and contemplating graduate school. That’s when the Jets called because 40-year-old Pat Leahy, the NFL’s oldest player, was out with sciatica, a condition that would force Leahy’s retirement this year.

“I always felt someone would call, so I stayed in shape and I practiced,” he said.

“You have to believe that some team will need a kicker at some time. It happens that way every year and you have to stay ready for that call.”

Days later, the call came twice for Allegre. His field goal at the end of regulation time lifted the Jets into a tie with Miami. Then he won the game in overtime and sent the Jets into the playoffs.

“I’ve kicked a lot of big field goals,” Allegre said at the time. “I kicked a 52-yarder against the Redskins for the Giants in the first game in 1989. I kicked in the Super Bowl.

“There was pressure this time, but you handle it the same way. You don’t think about the negatives, or what it means. You think about the adjustments you need, about concentrating and making the kick.”

You don’t think too much. But you do think.

“You think about the wind and the weather conditions and maybe the field condition,” Lowery says. “But you never think about what the kick means until you’re done.”

When Scott Norwood’s most important and memorable kick was done, at the end of the Super Bowl two years ago, he had plenty to think about. All bad.

How does a kicker handle that? Norwood still might be wondering because he had a rough year in ’91 and subsequently was released by Buffalo.

When Norwood slumped last season, his problems were magnified because he was the goat of the Super Bowl, the manufacturer of The Miss. It got so bad that the Bills sought to bar the media from asking about The Miss.

“Scott wants to concentrate on the future, not the past,” Bills coach Marv Levy said.

Now, Norwood can contemplate the future all he wants while he hopes the call from another team soon comes.

The worst part, you see, is not botching the kick. It’s not getting the chance to kick at all.