I have to admit I've dreamed of kicking the game-winning field goal in the Super Bowl many times. That's the fun thing about being a kicker, you never know when it's going to come down to your kick deciding the game.
— Adam Vinatieri
Preparation meets opportunity, and that causes success if you're prepared to do your job and you practice a lot, more times than not you're going to be successful.
In the end, the Super Bowl is just a football game. You try to take a couple of big, deep breaths and convince yourself it's just another game. You try to, anyway.
Every once in a while you do have a bad day.
Looking back on it, I'm extremely blessed to play on two very good teams, with great quarterbacks and owners.
I know I'm going to shoot a buffalo.
It's fun running out onto the field. It's much more fun playing in the playoffs.
I first learned about kicking under pressure in 1996, my rookie year with the Patriots. I was signed as a free agent by a team that already had Matt Bahr, one of the best kickers around. To win the job, I had to show coach Bill Parcells that I could make kicks when they counted. That process started in training camp.
Living in Indy, you have to be a race fan.
I'm a Red Sox fan, but I still have a lot of respect for Mariano Rivera, who's the best closer of all-time.
I really don't want to be a journeyman.
Eleven wins is hard to come by.
I'd love to be on 'Man vs. Wild.'
Selective amnesia is a good thing to have. So is good focus.
I think if I take care of my body it should continue to work the same way.
I have to make sure I get eight hours of solid sleep a night.
I had great grades. Why? Because I studied twice as long and twice as hard as everybody else.
NFL Europe helped me quite a bit. It was a situation where I came out of college and spent the first few months of my career over in Europe.
There's some guys - Michael Jordan and Mariano Rivera and Tiger Woods - that were blessed with the ability just to be... great.
It would be fun if I were 40 pounds heavier and a little bit faster to get in and play some linebacker.
When you get one blocked and another partially blocked, you've got to see if you're hitting them low or what.
I know I'm going to shoot a leopard.
I was born with a shotgun in my hand, chasing pheasant through the cornfields. My dad probably started taking me out when I was 4, 5 or 6 years old.
I learned early that it's very important to approach every single kick you attempt, even those in practice, as if it were in a game.
Coach Parcells challenged me a lot in my rookie year, and not just in games. Almost every day in practice, he'd stand right beside me as he called for the field-goal team to take the field.
I suppose any person who's played somewhere for a certain amount of time and then has the opportunity to go back and just reminisce a little bit, maybe it holds a different feeling than some of the other places.
I would compare kicking to being a closer in baseball. This whole game gets played, or the cake is made in front of you, so to speak, and you have to turn around and put the icing on the cake.
Anytime I'm on the field, I need to make every kick that's in front of me.
Making the playoffs is hard to come by, so if you can help contribute to your team's success it's always a successful time.
I get to put on a helmet, go out in front of 70,000 people and play a kids game. And they pay me to do it.
As a football player, as a kid and as a professional athlete the moment of playing in the Super Bowl and winning a Super Bowl, that's what you play your whole career for.
Obviously it's a statistics game.
I know my body needs to have the proper nutrition so that I can keep kicking at a high level. The same goes with sleep.
I was at the crossroads of my life when I was 7 years old.
If you do something enough with purpose long enough, you're eventually going to get really good at it.
I think you can develop your ability to be clutch, if that's the word that you will use, your ability to focus and to be able to block out all the external stuff.
There's a lot of fun things about this sport, but trying to hoist that trophy at the end is what we all play for.
Three surgeries on the same limb, that's a tall order.
I'm a South Dakota kid.
Cleaning out your locker the first week of January is not a whole lot of fun and it always leaves a lousy taste in your mouth.
In golf, there are times when you hit a ball so perfectly that you never feel the ball leave your club.
I don't know if I'm a clutch hunter, but I'm an avid one.
As kickers, it's all about being able to block out the crowd noise, being able to block out certain aspects of the game, and just do your job no matter what the circumstances are.
The mental aspect of kicking is the difficult part. Physically, we still have to be in shape and perform on the field, but the thing that separates the ones who make it versus the ones who don't is definitely the mental side.
Obviously we're all our own biggest critics.
Yeah, at the end of the year you always sit back and you evaluate, and unless you have a perfect season with no misses there is always room for improvement.
People think kickers in general kick field goals. But kickers are actually good athletes; we run and work out just like the rest of the football team.
Super Bowl kicks, those are the most memorable moments.
Proof is the product that you put on the field.
I don't have any aspirations to play until I'm 50 years old.
