Doyel on Adam Vinatieri: Stone face and an iron leg

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ATLANTA – Indianapolis Colts safety Dwight Lowery walked down the sideline, stared at him for a few seconds, then walked off. Adam Vinatieri didn’t notice. Linebacker D’Qwell Jackson was next, walking to the net where Vinatieri was kicking balls as the Colts drove into field goal range. Jackson watched, then walked off. Vinatieri didn’t notice.

Ten feet away was a sheriff’s deputy, security for the Georgia Dome. For five minutes, the armed deputy was staring bullets into him. Vinatieri didn’t notice.

“When it’s a game-winning kick,” holder (and punter) Pat McAfee was telling me after this game, “Vinny’s, like, gone. He’s in a zone.”

It’s the Michael Jordan zone, minus the shrug. It’s a stone face and an iron leg. It’s a game-winning field goal, the 26th of his eventual Hall of Fame career, after Vinatieri’s 43-yarder with 52 seconds left gave the Colts a 24-21 victory Sunday against the Atlanta Falcons.

This field goal, like so many before it, came with silence from the man who kicked it. The crowd of 70,433 was roaring. Receiver Donte Moncrief was patting Vinatieri on the rear end and hooting, “This is what you do!”

Vinatieri didn’t consciously feel it. Didn’t consciously hear it. Afterward he was trying to recreate for me the final minutes, then seconds, as he warmed up on the sideline and took a swig of water from his plastic Gatorade bottle and walked onto the field to kick a dagger through Atlanta’s heart.

He didn’t mention Lowery. Didn’t mention Jackson. Didn’t mention the sheriff’s deputy or Donte Moncrief or any of the chaos around him, the tension and the pressure obvious to everyone in the dome except the one guy being asked to kick the game-winning field goal.

And this is not how he acts on other field goals. On other kicks? He’s laughing, he’s joking. Vinatieri and McAfee are talking like a golfer and a caddy, McAfee suggesting which club to use, where to aim, what to do with the wind. And Vinatieri is smiling and nodding and finally telling McAfee, “I’m ready.”

Not with 52 seconds left on Sunday.

“When it comes to a game-winner,” Vinatieri was saying, “I guess I don’t acknowledge Pat.”

McAfee is standing at the next locker. He overhears this. He leans into our space.

“You become soulless,” McAfee says.

Vinatieri frowns at McAfee and tries to explain the difference. When the game is on the line, he’s saying, teammates leave him alone.

“As I walk onto the field,” Vinatieri is telling me, “only a couple teammates over the years have even given me one of these.”

Here, Vinatieri pats me hard on the shoulder.

A teammate gave you one of those today, I tell him.

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“Who?” he says.

Before I can tell him, Vinatieri goes back into his head, finds that zone he was in, and starts visualizing a memory he had repressed, for lack of a better word.

“Oh, right,” he says. “They were coming off the field, so it was an offensive player. It was … Moncrief, maybe.”

I’m staring. This is like watching someone come out of hypnosis. Vinatieri keeps talking.

“Yeah,” he says. “Moncrief slapped my butt and said something like, ‘You got this.’ Or maybe, ‘This is what you do.’ ”

You don’t remember?

“Not exactly,” he says. “I was pretty hammered in.”

A player like this, the most automatic big-kick artist in NFL history – he won two Super Bowls in New England – people leave him alone.

Even McAfee, who uttered the following bit of silliness about Vinatieri after the game – “hard-working guy, extremely attractive, old, kicks the hell out of the ball” – knows better than to joke with Vinatieri before such a kick. Colts special teams coach Tom McMahon stays 40 yards away. Doesn’t even look at Vinatieri as the offense crosses midfield, moving inexorably closer to his kicker's range of 60-plus yards as the clock ticks down on a game the Colts have never led.

They were down 14-0, then 21-7. They have thrown two picks, lost a fumble, seen an offensive lineman catch a lateral and voluntarily slide to the turf inches short of a first down. They have seen backup quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, 2-0 in his first two starts in place of Andrew Luck, struggle and then heat up and finally hit his rhythm on the final drive, converting four straight passes to move the Colts from their 19 to the Falcons’ 25.

It's pretty badass snapping game winners to THE GOAT!!! #4thDownArmy — Matt Overton (@MattOverton_LS) November 22, 2015

Long snapper Matt Overton is on the sideline, standing with McAfee. Not looking at Vinatieri.

“It’s an honor to know I’m about to go on the field with him,” Overton says, “and rock and roll.”

The game Sunday was Vinatieri’s 300th in the NFL, making him the only active player and just the 10th ever to reach that mark. It was his 26th game-winning kick, and understand what that entails: a winning kick in overtime, or in the final 60 seconds of regulation. A go-ahead field goal in the middle of the fourth quarter? Doesn’t count as a game-winner. Even if it’s the final three points of the game.

The Colts beat the Broncos 27-24 on Nov. 8. Vinatieri broke a 24-all tie with a 55-yard field goal. It came with 6:13 left in the game.

Didn’t count as a game-winner.

Vinatieri has won 26 games with an official game-winner. That’s 26 times in 300 games. I’m telling Vinatieri the numbers, then I tell him, “You’ve won one in every 11 games you’ve ever played.”

McAfee, who brought the word “soulless” into this story, chimes in.

“Twelve,” the math savant says. “One in 12.”

Technically it’s one in every 11.53 games, which rounds up to one in 12, but who’s counting? Not Vinatieri, who didn’t know Sunday was his 300th game until Colts spokesman Matt Conti told him, and didn’t know it was his 26th game-winner until the media told him. Vinatieri likewise doesn’t know what happens to him when the clock is inside a minute and it’s time to rock and roll.

“I don’t know where I go mentally,” he says. “I just try to focus in.”

On the sideline Sunday, Andrew Luck was trying not to smile. Vinatieri was walking onto the field, Moncrief was smacking his rear end, and Luck was on the sideline – dressed in shorts and a shirt and a baseball cap – and watching Vinatieri stride toward destiny. And Luck wasn’t worried. I mean, not any.

“When you have Vinny,” Luck was telling me, “you don’t worry. He’s the best.”

I nod and start to walk away. Luck stops me.

“Ever,” he says.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.

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Bucs at Colts, 1 p.m. Sunday, Fox