Kickers don’t get much respect, until the game’s on the line.
Knight Ridder Newspapers

HOUSTON – Adam Vinatieri describes himself as an evil necessity, but he doesn’t look like either one.

There’s nothing sinister about that smiling South Dakota face, and it’s hard to believe a pro football team couldn’t get along without his 6-foot, 202-pound body. Teams have bigger equipment managers than Adam Vinatieri.

But he won a Super Bowl for the New England Patriots a couple of years ago, and there’s a better than average chance he’ll be called on to do it again Sunday. If not him, then Carolina’s John Kasay, who’s smaller yet and looks even more like somebody’s prom date.

If this game goes according to form, points will be harder to find than an original coach’s quote, and when the cattle are all done running into each other, the outcome might well be decided by a one-trick pony whom nobody wants to talk to.

That would be a fair description of a place kicker in the seconds before he attempts a game winning field goal. At a time when a few words of support might be welcome, a kicker is treated like a stranger.

“It doesn’t matter whether I want people to talk to me then or not, because nobody ever does,” said Vinatieri. “Nobody wants to say the wrong thing. It’s like you have the plague.”

Kickers and punters aren’t actually quarantined, but they have been more or less segregated from the general football population since the days when Lou Groza played tackle. They’re usually undersized and cerebral and just unpredictable enough to make coaches hate them. As Vinatieri put it: “We’re that evil necessity as long as there are special teams.”

They’re also frequently walk-ons in college or low salaried personnel in the pros, although that’s been changing. The necessary is outrunning the evil where kickers are concerned these days.

Bill Belichick for one measures value in points, rather than pounds, which is why Vinatieri was designated as New England’s franchise player, and why he’s the only man on the roster with guaranteed money.

He’s also great friends with Ken Walter, the Patriots’ holder and punter. Belichick actually cut Walter this summer, but he re-signed him a week later, and it’s believed that the punter’s personal and professional relationship with Vinatieri helped him get his job back. Reliable holders are enormous frozen assets in December games in New England.

Vinatieri admits he’s a kicker because he wasn’t big enough to be a linebacker.

“I don’t think I chose kicking. I think kicking chose me,” he said.

And Walter is happy to be a punter, because he’s such a dreadful kicker. “That’s scary,” he said. “We’re talking line drives and spirals all around the goal posts. My kickoffs are worse.”

So they’re comfortable in their roles and used to taking some good natured abuse about it from their teammates. “Guys on the team tell us we don’t do anything on the field, we just stand around,” said Walter. “But then we always say, Would you want to be us on Sunday?’ and their first reaction is no.”

On the other hand, Walter has sat next to Tom Brady after games when the quarterback looked like he’d been attacked by wolves for three hours, and he wants no part of that. He’ll settle for where he is now. At least, kickers and punters have each other.

Walter points to Carolina punter Todd Sauerbrun’s $1.4 million salary for example and calls it “setting the bar.” The higher, the happier.

“The NFL is finding out and agents are finding out that it’s a skill and it’s needed,” he said. “With salary caps and defenses being so tough, games are being decided by field position and field goals. They come down to game winners all the time. You don’t think that’s worth it?”

We’ll probably find out Sunday.