Zak Keefer

zak.keefer@indystar.com

Colts at Titans%2C 1 p.m. Sunday%2C CBS

1. January 1997. New Orleans.

Pat McAfee was nine years old, a fourth grader in Plum, Pa. He played youth soccer. Talked too much in school. Andrew Luck was seven, a first grader at The American School of London, and hadn't played a game of football in his life. Zach Kerr was six. He rolled around on the floor and watched Rugrats. Matt Overton was 10. He helped his Pop Warner youth football team to the Super Bowl.

Adam Vinatieri kicked off in the other Super Bowl, the one in the Louisiana Superdome, the one between Brett Favre's Green Bay Packers and Drew Bledsoe's New England Patriots. Vinatieri? He was the Patriots rookie out of South Dakota State, the kid whose claim to fame to that point was tackling Herschel Walker in a game earlier that season.

He still likes to tell that story to his Indianapolis Colts teammates, the guys who are closer in age to his three children than to him. Herschel Walker. Ever heard of that guy? I tackled him. Saved a touchdown.

The guy he didn't tackle that night in the Louisiana Superdome was Desmond Howard, who took a Vinatieri kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown in the third quarter to seal Green Bay's win. After the victory, Reggie White, the Packers' legendary defensive end, ran around the field and waved the Lombardi Trophy in celebration.

That was almost 18 years ago. One hundred and six players suited up in Super Bowl XXXI that night in New Orleans; 105 of them have since seen their football careers come to a close. Favre has retired. Twice. Bledsoe lost his job to a kid named Tom Brady. Howard talks on ESPN. White has passed away.

Vinatieri remains the outlier, the last man standing, the graying beard in a game of 20-somethings. Nineteen seasons in, the Colts kicker is the NFL's oldest player, the middle-aged man who still finds joy in a game most bid farewell while in their 20s. If they're lucky, their 30s. He turns 42 on Sunday.

Oh – and he hasn't missed this year. Not in 27 field goal attempts. Not in 48 extra points. He's one game away – Sunday's regular season finale in Tennessee – from becoming the fifth kicker in NFL history not miss a kick over a full season.

2. April 1995. Abingdon, Va.

How far is a kid willing to go to chase a dream? Far enough to load his life into his pickup truck, drive 17 hours from South Dakota to western Virginia to work with a kicking guru confined to a wheelchair.

What else was he going to do? Adam Vinatieri was a mediocre college kicker, a kid out of eligibility and out of prospects. The NFL had passed on him. Doug Blevins, that man in a wheelchair, was his best hope. His only hope. So Vinatieri drove through the night, arrived at Blevins' home at 2 a.m. and slept in the bed of his truck.

"At that point," Vinatieri says now, "I was committed to doing everything and anything I could to try and get in the league."

Blevins was born with cerebral palsy. Never played a down of football in his life. But he knew kicking, and he'd been highly recommended, and Vinatieri wasn't exactly in a spot to be choosy. Blevins saw Vinatieri's raw potential right away; he also saw there was work to be done. Stop swinging those hips left, he'd shout from his wheelchair on the high school field that became their second home.

That kicking boot camp sprouted a 19-year NFL career. Vinatieri lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Abingdon for eight months. Kicked every day. Waited tables at night. Lifted weights at the local high school. Heeded Blevins' instructions. Slowly, that raw potential began to trickle through.

3. January 2002. Foxborough, Mass.

He remembers the snow more than the kick. Vinatieri stood on the sideline, stunned, while referee Walt Coleman said something about the quarterback tucking the football and … well … it hit him. This is going to come down to a field goal, he thought. Time to warm up. Sure enough, that Brady kid pulled the Patriots into field goal position two plays later.

Vinatieri trotted through the snowstorm and told himself three things. Don't fall. Get your plant foot down. Hit your center over the back of the head.

He lined it up. He stepped forward, carefully, deliberately – "like you're running on ice," he recalls. He didn't fall. He planted his left foot on a bed of snow and used his right foot to boom a prayer into the New England night.

He skulled the football like an 18-handicapper skulls a 2-iron. "Only got 20 feet off the ground," he says. But he hit his center in the back of the head. That's a good thing for a kicker. That means the ball went straight. It faded, further and further into the snow, until he couldn't see it anymore. It was still going. He eyed the referees. Still going. They raised their hands. It was good.

"Felt like that thing felt forever to get to the goalpost," he remembers.

Patriots 13, Raiders 13. Vinatieri's 45-yard boot in the blizzard sent the game into overtime. He'd just made the most impossible kick in NFL history.

In overtime, he drilled a 23-yarder to send Oakland home and send New England to the 2002 AFC title game. Vinatieri's legend was born.

4. August 1991. West Point, N.Y.

He was 18. He sat in a packed auditorium while general Norman Schwarzkopf ordered the freshman class of the United States Military Academy to look to their left, then to their right. "Odds are, two of the three of you aren't going to make it," he told them.

Schwarzkopf was right – at least in Vinatieri's case. The greatest clutch kicker in NFL history didn't last 20 days at West Point. "Went for the wrong reasons, came home for the wrong reasons," he says, shaking his head 25 years later, hinting at the homesickness that pulled him back home.

How'd he end up there? Dad was a military man. Top Gun had come out a few years prior. Vinatieri applied to the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, the Marines. He ended up at West Point. Heard Schwarzkopf's speech. Turned to his left. To his right. He was back in South Dakota two days later.

5. July 1996. Smithfield, R.I.

Welcome to an NFL training camp. Vinatieri had last played in something called the World Bowl III for some team called the Amsterdam Admirals. Didn't have much of a shot here, either. The only reason the Patriots' fiery head coach, Bill Parcells, had brought him to camp was to light a fire in 16-year veteran Matt Bahr.

Vinatieri stole the job. The 40-year-old Bahr was out, the 23-year-old rookie – the kid out of South Dakota State no one had ever heard of – was in. "I'm going to give you an opportunity to show me what you've got," Parcells told him. "And either you're going to shine, or you're going to pack your s--- and get out of here."

He never had to pack up his s---. He made 27 of 35 field goals that season, tackled Herschel Walker and kicked off to Desmond Howard in Super Bowl XXXI, the same year Pat McAfee was a rowdy fourth grader, Andrew Luck was seven years old living in London, Zach Kerr was watching Rugrats and Matt Overton was playing Pop Warner.

6. June 1876. Big Horn Country, Montana.

Wait – 1876? When did this become a history lesson? Stay with me.

Civil War commander George Armstrong Custer was steering his troops towards the banks of the Little Big Horn. He told his bandmaster, a respected musician and close friend by the name of Felix Vinatieri, to stay behind. It's a good thing he did: Custer and his men were slaughtered by three American Indian tribes in what came to be known as Custer's Last Stand.

Six months after the battle Felix Vinatieri was discharged from the Army. He settled and married in Yankton, South Dakota. Raised eight children. Four generations later, on December 28, 1972, the greatest clutch kicker in NFL history was born in Yankton, South Dakota.

Had Felix Vinatieri made the trip, Paul Vinatieri – Adam's father – has said, "there probably wouldn't be anybody, no Vinatieri's, no Adam."

7. February 2002. New Orleans.

Back in New Orleans. Back in the Super Bowl. Vinatieri didn't get much sleep the night before. Kickers never do. "All you can think about is the game coming down to a field goal," he says. They're either the hero, or they're Scott Norwood.

The game was knotted at 17 late in the fourth, and Brady was doing it again. The Patriots were moving downfield. Vinatieri stayed loose on the sidelines, kicking into his warm-up net while he snuck glances at the JumboTron. Brady to Troy Brown. Brady to Jermaine Wiggins. Suddenly, they were in field goal range. It was time. Forty-eight yards. For Super Bowl XXXVI. He was either going to be the hero, or he was going to be Scott Norwood.

He jogged on the field and the world stalled. "Everything was in slow motion," he remembers. Unlike in Foxborough three weeks earlier, there was no wind inside the Louisiana Superdome. No snow. No blizzard. Vinatieri struck the sweet spot – "like when you're golfing and you hit the ball without even feeling it," he recalls 13 years later – and watched his life change forever. Forty-eight yards. Through the uprights. Patriots 20, Rams 17. They were world champions.

The kid from South Dakota had just won his team the Super Bowl.

8. April 2005. New England.

He was tired of the lowball offers and the franchise tags. He'd been in New England 10 years. Made 20 game-winners. Hit the most impossible kick in NFL history. Clinched a Super Bowl three weeks later. Clinched another two years later. What's a man have to do to get a long-term deal?

Vinatieri was a free agent, and the Patriots were offering a three-year deal. He wanted five. Unhappy, he fired his agent. Hired a new one. Wanted it to be known that he was willing to part ways with the only NFL franchise he'd ever known.

Tony Dungy, entering his fourth season as Colts coach, was half-gazing at NFL news in his office one morning when he saw a headline that stopped him. "Adam Vinatieri to visit Green Bay," it read.

Most in NFL circles, like Dungy, didn't believe it. But he got his boss on the line, Colts general manager Bill Polian, and asked him, "Shouldn't we be contacting him?"

So Polian did. "Is he serious about this?" he asked Vinatieri's new agent, Gary Uberstine. "Or is he just doing this to get the Patriots to pay up?"

Vinatieri was serious, Uberstine vowed. Had a half-dozen flights planned – first to Green Bay, then to Dallas, then others. Clubs were lining up to try and lure the Super Bowl hero to town.

Polian offered five years, $12 million. Kick in a dome? For a Super Bowl contender? For a team with Peyton Manning at quarterback? "Make it happen," Vinatieri told his agent. He never made it on those flights.

9. February, 2002. New England.

He'd just become the Super Bowl hero. His fame erupted overnight. A relative on his mother's side of the family reached out, a man familiar with the celebrity spotlight. They stayed in touch, and every year before he passed in 2007, Evel Knievel sent Adam Vinatieri, his third-cousin, a Christmas card with two white, fluffy dogs on it.

Thriving under pressure, it seems, runs in the family.

10. Spring 1995. Brookings, S.D.

What doesn't get a kicker into the NFL? Hitting 27-of-53 field goals in college. Hitting 4-for-12 your senior year. Before he won four Super Bowls and played in five, Adam Vinatieri piled up meager numbers at Division II South Dakota State.

"My college stats," Vinatieri says, looking for the right words, "were less than great."

He was a quarterback and linebacker (and kicker) in high school, but after a week on campus, his coach pulled him aside and shared the ugly truth: He was fourth-string at quarterback. He'd never see the field. So, instead, he kicked and punted for four years.

By graduation, the NFL appeared a pipe dream – that is until the Dallas Cowboys called. They told Vinatieri they weren't drafting him, but he had an outside shot at a training camp invitation. Then the Canadian Football League called. They offered him even better: A spot on a team.

He mulled it over with his father, but decided to chase the dream. He passed on the CFL. He wanted the NFL. Problem was: Dallas never called. So Vinatieri called them, and they told him they were going in a different direction.

"I'm literally standing there, the CFL season has already started and I don't know what to do," he says. "I thought I might have screwed everything up."

He called an old friend from South Dakota, Brian Hanson, who happened to be punting for the New York Jets. Hanson told him to call his kicking coach, a man with cerebral palsy who shouts instructions from a wheelchair.

11. Spring 1977. Yankton, S.D.

This is when a father introduces his five-year old son to the family pastime. If young Adam is to be a Vinatieri, a real Vinatieri, he would learn to hunt. So there he was, bundled up, sitting in a duck blind, trying not to freeze, hunting with his dad and his brothers before his sixth birthday.

He grew to love it. The challenge. The camaraderie. It has stayed with him. Gaze at the African gazelle, the klipspringer, the musk ox, the grizzly bear that hang on the walls of the den in his Carmel home. They are his trophies from excursions across the world – Alaska, Canada's Northwest Territory, the Artic tundra.

Big game? It goes beyond the Super Bowl-winning kicks. Vinatieri hunts it.

12. Summer 1995. Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

This is where his dream has taken him. This is where his pro football career debuted. Ten games. Twelve weeks. It was his stepping stone, his chance to prove to NFL scouts he was better than 27-for-53, better than 4-for-12.

At Blevins' urging, Vinatieri packed his things (again) and moved overseas and played a season with the Amsterdam Admirals of the World League of American Football (later NFL Europe). Most games, he kicked in front of some-30,000 fans. And he kicked well.

"It gave me an opportunity to be seen on a bigger stage," he says. "And I needed that exposure."

The scouts saw. He came home and found out two NFL teams were interested: The Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots. New England, looking to motivate their veteran kicker, invited him to training camp.

13. January 2007. Baltimore.

Games like this, on the road in the playoffs, when the nerves are tight and the points are precious, are what they brought him here for. The previous spring, Polian had jettisoned the most accurate kicker NFL had ever seen – Mike Vanderjagt – for the most clutch kicker the NFL had ever seen – Vinatieri.

The 2006 Colts, once 9-0, stumbled late in the year and found themselves on the road in the second round of the postseason, facing the Baltimore Ravens' bruising defense. The game unfolds ugly: Drive after drive stalled. The endzone proved elusive. So Vinatieri stepped in. He hit from 23 yards and 48 yards in the first quarter. From 51 in the second. From 48 in the third. And from 45 late in the fourth.

"Money," coach Tony Dungy mouthed on the sideline as Vinatieri capped a 5-for-5 day with the clincher.

Colts 15, Ravens 6. Polian was never more thankful he'd made the call that brought Vinatieri to Indianapolis.

Three weeks later, under a steady rain in Miami, Vinatieri and Dungy hoisted the Lombardi Trophy. The Colts had won their first Super Bowl in the Indianapolis Era; Vinatieri had won his fourth in six seasons.

14. Spring 1995. Brookings, S.D.

Adam Vinatieri is an intern at a cardiac rehab hospital, in his last year in college, and it is here he decides that if kicking footballs doesn't work out, he's going to become a surgeon. He sat through quadruple bypass surgeries, saw patients' chests cracked open, saw the veins pulled out. "I could've dropped a tic-tac in the guy's chest cavity," he recalls in awe. "The most amazing thing I ever saw."

Kicking footballs worked out, though, so 20 years later he's stuck looking back.

"I would've been a good surgeon somewhere," he assures himself. "I'm pretty driven in what I do. I think I would've busted my butt."

15. February 2004. Houston.

Mr. Clutch went cold that night. He missed his first two field goal attempts in Super Bowl XXXVII, the Patriots back in the big game against upstart Carolina. But Brady was at it again, marching New England down the field in a tie game as the clock inched toward zeroes. Vinatieri cleared his head, lined up from 42 yards and struck it clean. Patriots 32, Panthers 29. Ho-hum. Another Super Bowl winner from Adam Vinatieri. The man lived for the big moment. The legend grew.

16. Fall 2014. Indianapolis.

He wears his age in his gray-speckled facial hair. Changes the radio in the Colts' weight room sometimes – from the heavy rap the youngsters like to the classic rock he prefers. His teammates pester him with questions about their 401(k). He still loves what he does.

"It's come to the point where I'm the big brother – even the dad – figure, if you will," Vinatieri says. "Guys come up and ask me all the time, 'What's the secret?'"

He's never kicked better. Still perfect this season heading into Week 17. Only Gary Anderson in 1999 (he was 35-for-35) and Vanderjagt (he was 37-for-37 in 2003 with the Colts) have finished a perfect season with more than 20 attempts. Dating back to last year, he's has drilled 34 straight, the fourth-longest streak in NFL history. Adam Vinatieri. The ageless marvel.

He's hit five-game winners since arriving in Indianapolis in 2006 and this year he became the only player in NFL history to record 900 points with two different teams. This week, he was named to his third Pro Bowl.

He sees the end in sight. He's not ready for it.

"At some point, I'll be too old to do it," he concedes. "But that's a battle I'm not willing to give up just yet. The guys in this locker room, they really keep me young."

17. Fall 1983. Rapid City, S.D.

It was a youth football game, a bunch of kids running around in a sort of controlled chaos. The coach knew who his quarterback was, who his running back was, who his wide receivers were. What he needed was a kicker.

He asked if anyone knew anything about field goals. A 10-year-old Adam Vinatieri raised his hand.

"I'd like to give it a try."

Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134 and follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.