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Now here's the kicker: Keep [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]off field
Just seconds remaining in the game. A field goal would win it. Onto the field comes the kicker.
If you are a Texans fan, you shouldn't want Sunday's game against Indianapolis to come down to such a moment. Defensive end Antonio Smith doesn't.
It isn't that Smith doesn't trust current Texans and former Arizona Cardinals teammate [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]— though he has seen [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] blow a game or three with missed kicks down the stretch. Smith, like most football players, simply doesn't want the team's fate decided by a boot, or a cleat as it were.
"No player ever wants it to be close enough that you need a kick to win, but the majority of the games are won that way because the league is so tight," Smith said.
Kickers such as the Colts' leg man Adam Vinatieri relish such moments. So does [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], even though the last time he attempted a game-winning kick - a 34-yarder against Green Bay in the NFC playoffs last January - he missed.
"If I didn't want to be in that situation again, I should get out of the business," [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] said. "If I didn't like it, I should have done something else. That's what we chose as a career. That's the life of a kicker.
"If the ball hits off the uprights and bounces through, you're great. But if it hits the upright and shoots back at you, you're terrible."
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], who beat out Kris Brown for the job this summer, has been that kind of terrible more than he likes. The statistics aren't highlighted in team media guides, but [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] has missed at least six late-game kicks that could have won or tied games for his teams.
On a positive note, [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] has made six game-winners (in the last two minutes or overtime) during his 10-year career.
Does that mean he is a 50-50 proposition in clutch situations? The Texans don't want to find out.
Brown, who is a free agent, has made 13 game-winning kicks - 10 as a Texan and seven in the final three minutes or in overtime - over an 11-year career while playing on only three winning teams. But his two crucial misses last season that could have tied games in the final seconds against Tennessee and Indianapolis were the impetus for [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]' arrival in the offseason.
Fans turned on Brown. They are going to love the cannon-legged [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] ... until he misses.
Vinatieri a top clutch man
Past and potential failures haven't made [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], who lost two kick-offs for jobs in 2003 before catching on with the Cardinals because of a midseason injury, afraid of the big moment. Good kickers have short memories.
Come Sunday, in the first game of the 2010 season, [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] hopes to be put in a game-winning position again; confident this time he will deliver.
"I've always said, 'I've never gone on the field trying to miss a field goal,'  "[link widoczny dla zalogowanych] said.
A kicker has little control over how many clutch kicks he tries in a career. [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] set an NFL record with 40 field goals (in 42 attempts) in 2005, but none was a game-winner. That he has played on only two winning teams - the 2008 and '09 Cardinals - has something to do with so few game-deciding tries.
Not every kicker can be Vinatieri, perhaps the most accomplished clutch kicker in NFL history. Vinatieri has made 22 game-winning field goals in his career, and we're talking real game-winners, as in kicks made in the final 35 seconds or in overtime. On Vinatieri's résumé are two kicks that won Super Bowls, including Super Bowl XXXVIII at Reliant Stadium.
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych] spent his first three years in Cincinnati, where the Bengals won 12 games and "95 percent of the fans were happy to see me go."
"One of the things that has made this transition easy is the great locker room," he said. "I can't wait to get out there and help us win games.
"Kicking in the game, honestly, will be the easy part. It's been a grueling camp as far as competition. The rest should be easy."
Easy indeed. Unless, or until, he misses a key kick.
One-shot deal for kickers
"It's always tough on kickers," said Smith, who was [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]' teammate in Arizona from 2004-08. "That's just part of the game. They get extra pressure on them because all they get is one shot, one play to go out there and make it happen.
"We all make mistakes, but theirs come out in the open and maybe at the worst times."
With just seconds remaining in close games.