Vinatieri: ‘I just screwed that up’

SAN DIEGO -- The rain had stopped, so the weather was good.

The setup was perfect.

The 67,726 fans at Qualcomm Stadium, stoked to a frenzy by the San Diego Chargers’ stunning 23-point first half Sunday but descending an emotional slope after the Indianapolis Colts threatened to snatch the victory from them, were almost expecting the worst.

With only 94 seconds left, Adam Vinatieri stepped up to kick a 29-yard field goal that would have put the Colts ahead in a game they seemed only too eager to give away. They had made an unconscionable number of mistakes -- Peyton Manning had five passes intercepted and would add a sixth, two more times than he’d been picked off in the Colts’ previous eight games -- but they still had a chance to win.

Vinatieri was ready. He had missed once before, a 42-yard try with the clock running out near the end of the first half, and suddenly that loomed larger and larger.

Surely, he wouldn’t miss again. He couldn’t.

Not after the Colts, bruised and thin at almost every position, had somehow managed to claw back into contention. Their hopes came down to Vinatieri, acknowledged as a terrific clutch kicker and the man nicknamed “Automatic Adam” for an 82.8% career regular-season success rate that ranks fifth among NFL kickers who have made more than 100 field-goal tries.

All he had to do was boot the ball through the uprights on a calm, cool night. Not through a blinding snowstorm, as he had for the New England Patriots against the Oakland Raiders in 2001 in a divisional playoff game at Foxborough, Mass. There, he kicked a 45-yard field goal to tie the score and a 23-yarder to win in overtime.

And he had later won two Super Bowl championships with last-second kicks.

Vinatieri had everything going for him emotionally and strategically Sunday.

“Everything else was great. The guys did a good job blocking. The snap and hold were perfect,” he said.

The result wasn’t.

Vinatieri’s kick sailed slightly wide to the right, igniting a celebration in the stands and dejection on the Colts’ side of the field. They managed to march downfield again with another chance to pull it out, but Manning twice couldn’t find his receivers and, finally, threw an interception for the ignominious sixth time and the Colts lost, 23-21.

Vinatieri’s late miss, though, was the biggest surprise on a night full of wild and weird plays.

“He could kick a million in a row right now and probably not miss another one,” Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers said.

But he missed that one, the one that might have spared the Super Bowl champions their second loss in a row, a week after they squandered a 20-10 lead over the Patriots and lost, 24-20.

Reporters who clustered around his corner stall in the locker room offered Vinatieri a variety of excuses.

It was a crazy play in a crazy game. The conditions might not have been perfect.

To his credit, he rejected every chance to blame someone or something else.

“It was all me. I just screwed that up,” he said, not flinching once.

He wasn’t sure if it was good after he kicked it, hoping it would be straight and true enough.

“I had to look up. It was close to the right upright,” he said. “But at that range -- it wasn’t a 58-yarder -- it’s one that you should make every time you step on the field, so I’m pretty disappointed I let my team down.”

Not once, but twice, including that hasty kick with two seconds left in the first half and the Chargers leading, 23-7.

“That’s one that you’re running out there as fast as you can to get going trying to get it off before the clock comes,” he said. “That was a less-than-perfect operation. That last one is on me. . . . I let the team down.”

He wasn’t alone.

The Colts’ special teams were defenseless against Darren Sproles’ kickoff return for a touchdown on the first play of the game and Sproles’ touchdown off a punt return later in the first quarter.

“Special teams, they outplayed us,” Vinatieri said. “We had a lot of mistakes across the board. We play a little cleaner and maybe the outcome is a little different.”

Manning wasn’t about to let Vinatieri shoulder the burden for this ugly loss, claiming a large part of it for himself.

“I didn’t do my job. There were a lot of silly plays that could have been different, and the outcome of the game would have been different,” Manning said.

He wouldn’t say whether he was shocked by Vinatieri’s miss, as the crowd seemed to be.

“You always want to try to take care of it yourself as an offensive player. You want to try to do your job and get your team in the end zone and not have to rely on the defense and the special teams to bail you out,” Manning said.”

He didn’t mention the points Vinatieri might have provided. Vinatieri did.

“I didn’t play real well,” he said. “We let that one game get away.”

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Helene Elliott can be reached at helene.elliott@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Elliott, go to latimes.com/elliott.