He Kicks Off Patriot Party Virtually by Himself

The game ended, the confetti fell, the hero stuck his arms into the smoky sky, and where were they?

Where was the entire New England Patriot team running over to jump on Adam Vinatieri?

Where was the gratitude for a guy who, with one swipe of his right foot with four seconds remaining, officially became the best pressure performer of this sports era?

At the end of boot-stomping, Texas-sized Super Bowl, after Vinatieri’s boot performed the final stomp in the Patriots’ 32-29 victory over the Carolina Panthers, only two teammates showed up at midfield to dance with him.

One for each Super Bowl he has kicked into infamy in the most chilling, underappreciated feat in sports history.

“They don’t understand,” said holder Ken Walter, shaking his head. “They never understand.”

Understand this:

Vinatieri kicking a 41-yard field goal with four seconds remaining Sunday to crown the Patriots Super Bowl champions is like Tiger Woods making a 50-yard putt to win the Masters.

With thousands screaming at him from the gallery. With camera flashes filling his vision. With the lives of 45 other people directly resting on that putt. And with his opponents running at him with their hands in the air.

“You know, I never thought of it that way ... but I can’t think of it that way,” said Vinatieri, shrugging, shaking his head.

Vinatieri kicking that field goal after already missing one and having one blocked on this night is like Michael Jordan hitting a shot to win the NBA championship.

A midcourt shot.

“I can’t think, ‘Oh no, what if I miss it,’ ” Vinatieri said. “You have to put everything behind you. You can’t think of the score or the game or what happened earlier. All that can matter is you and that one kick.”

One kick becomes another kick becomes history.

After winning the Super Bowl for the Patriots against the St. Louis Rams with a 48-yard field goal in the final seconds two seasons ago, he’s done this more times in three years than anyone has done in a lifetime.

Talk about deja whew.

“Now that’s amazing,” he said.

It was the perfect ending to a perfectly nutty game that will rank as one of the best variety-show Super Bowls.

There was a boring first quarter, a fastbreak second quarter, a bare-breasted halftime show, a bare-bottomed third quarter, and then a boffo finish.

Forget Janet Jackson, who allowed Justin Timberlake to expose one of her breasts at halftime. And forget that jock-clad intruder who ran onto the field at the start of the third quarter and performed a strange sort of river dance before Patriot Matt Chatham knocked him upstream.

The person who showed the most skin on this night was Vinatieri.

It’s tough, impenetrable, pure alligator.

So, Patriot Tedy Bruschi, what were you thinking before he launched his last kick?

“No doubt. No doubt. No doubt,” Bruschi said. “He’s kicked so many big ones, we knew he would do it again.”

So, Panther Brentson Buckner, what were you thinking?

“At first I thought, so much pressure on him, so hard for him, maybe we had a chance,” Buckner said. “But then you thought, he’s done this before. We knew we were in a tough spot.”

You want tough spots?

Vinatieri said he spent Saturday night visualizing big kicks ... then showed up Sunday and botched his first one, blowing a 31-yard try wide right after New England’s first possession.

“I was probably a little excited, and was a little bit too fast,” he said in trademark deadpan voice.

You, excited?

“Well, yeah,” he said.

Then, in the second quarter, he helped blow a seven-minute, 67-yard drive when his low 36-yard field-goal attempt was blocked by Shane Burton.

“We thought he might be thinking about that one for a while,” Buckner said.

All this, and by halftime, he realized his left plant-foot was slipping on the newly painted grass.

At this point, some kickers would lose their heads. Vinatieri, who had 15 game-winning kicks in his eight-year career before Sunday, simply changed his shoes.

His left shoe, to be exact. He wanted something with longer cleats. He didn’t mind that he took the field in the second half with two different shoes.

“Anything to help,” he said.

As the game wound to its nerve-bending conclusion, Vinatieri had even more reason to fret. While he was on the sideline trying to knock kicks into the practice net, cameras were surrounding him and flashes were peppering him.

Walter had to momentarily switch from his holder to his bodyguard.

“I think I said some mean things to some of those people, and I apologize, but I had to get them away from Adam, it was impossible to do his work,” Walter said. “Sometimes it really gets difficult.”

Often worse than that.

After Scott Norwood missed a game-winning field-goal attempt for the Buffalo Bills in the 1991 Super Bowl, his life changed forever, and every kicker knows it.

On this night, Vinatieri needed to only look at the previous 10 minutes.

John Kasay will be forever remembered by the Panthers as the guy whose kickoff went out of bounds -- a lousy kickoff! -- setting up the Patriots’ game-winning drive from the 40-yard line.

“We needed a really good kick and I didn’t get it done,” said Kasay, which is the last you might be hearing from him for a while.

When it was Viniatieri’s turn, he was given one more apparent hurdle, as the Panthers called timeout in an attempt to freeze him.

Right.

The guy beat the Oakland Raiders in a playoff game in the snow a couple of years ago, and you’re going to ice him?

“Honestly, icing the kicker, I don’t think works too terribly much,” Vinatieri said. “You have an extra minute to relax, and take a couple of deep breaths.”

He nailed the kick, and moments later the game ended, and teammates charged the field, and Vinatieri was again mostly ignored, and Ken Walter thought back to practice.

“Every day, our teammates see us on the sidelines and say, ‘Hey, I want that job,’ ” Walter said. “And we say, ‘Fine, do you want it on Sunday?’ And they always say no.”

Nobody wants this job. Adam Vinatieri loves this job. For the second time in three years, a championship had been won because of it. Legends are made of less.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read his previous columns, go to latimes.com/plaschke.