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Their Right FeetEverything you need to know, and more, about the Super Bowl kickers.

By Stefan Fatsis
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2008, at 12:18 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

The second kick elicited a worldwide wail from Giants fans and the usual "I could have done that" refrain from the masses. It was a terrible kick, a far-left line drive that I indeed could have—and have—executed. But Tynes wasn't entirely to blame, T-Mac says. He slipped. As his plant foot landed next to the ball, it slid forward slightly. That caused his left side to "fly open" in that direction. His right leg, and the ball, followed. You can see it on the video (4:27 mark). Watch how Tynes' left foot and then the rest of his body skip left after the kick. Ideally, everything should point toward the goalposts.

What happened? Tynes may have hesitated slightly because of the high and wide snap. Like batters in baseball, kickers can actually see the ball during their approach—I learned to focus on a spot of pebbled leather on the lower right quarter-panel. The imperceptible delay caused by the poor snap could have messed Tynes up. "It doesn't take much," T-Mac says. "Just a slight hesitation. It could be point-five, point-three seconds—just a flex of the ab muscle, not your normal flow—to just throw everything off."

In the coldly deterministic world of the kicker, though, no one cares about causes, just results. If Tynes had missed the overtime kick and the Giants had lost, he'd probably be looking for work today. But he drilled it, which can't hurt if he faces a similar situation in the Super Bowl. A kicking coach once told me that the only kick that matters is the next one. But experience matters, too. Tynes has that now.

What he doesn't have is Gostkowski's kickoff leg, which over the course of the game could prove more important. Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders has argued that kickoff distance is as important as, if not more important than, field-goal percentage. The simple reason: field position. Schatz and his colleagues have determined that every 5 yards of field position is worth about 0.4 points in scoring. Gostkowski's kickoffs traveled 64.5 yards on average this season, and the Patriots' opponents started their drives on their own 27-yard-line. After adjusting for weather, Gostkowski's kickoffs were worth 6.16 points to the team over the season, second-best in the NFL. Tynes' kickoffs averaged 61.8 yards and the Giants' opponents started on their own 31-yard-line. They cost the Giants 1.03 points, 26th in the league. It won't be wise to give Tom Brady and the Patriots' record-setting offense a few extra yards.

Every kicker in the NFL has grade-A sangfroid. If Gostkowski didn't, he couldn't have withstood the pressure of replacing a likely Hall of Famer. If Tynes didn't, he wouldn't have started trotting onto Lambeau Field to attempt the game-winner before his coaches had given him the go-ahead to kick. But the Super Bowl is different. No human can block out that the whole world is watching. Baltimore Ravens kicker Matt Stover, who kicked in the 2001 game, told me that the biggest risk for Gostkowski and Tynes is that the spectacle and hype will lead them to overkick—that is, to swing harder than normal.

Before his Super Bowl, Stover says he called his friend Craig Hentrich, who punted in three of them for Green Bay and Tennessee. Hentrich offered two pieces of advice. The first was to forget your normal pregame routine—crucial for kickers who need to evaluate field conditions and gauge their range—and warm up whenever possible, because the field becomes a zoo as game-time approaches. The second: Don't trip on the way to the opening kickoff. Stover made two of three field goals in the Ravens' 34-7 rout of the Giants. The miss came on his first attempt because, Stover says, he overkicked.

If Sunday's game comes down to a last-second field goal, Stover says, Gostkowski or Tynes will have to "compartmentalize" it the way successful kickers always do. They will have to treat the kick like any other. I'll be pulling for the Super Bowl to end with one of them leaping into his holder's arms, even if I'm alone with my kicking brethren in feeling that way. After Tynes' adventures in Green Bay, one of my former Broncos teammates sent me a disgusted text message. "Kickers blow," he wrote. "Quote me. I speak for 95 percent of guys in the league."

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Stefan Fatsis is a sports commentator for National Public Radio and the author of Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players. His new book, A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-foot-8, 170-pound, 43-year-old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL, will be published in July.
Photograph of Lawrence Tynes by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images. Photograph of Stephen Gostkowski by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images.
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