Vinatieri Credits Belichick, Parcells For Helping His Career Reach Unparalleled Heights
BOSTON (CBS) -- On Sunday, ageless wonder Adam Vinatieri set an NFL record with his 43rd consecutive successful field-goal attempt.
At 43 years old and as the oldest player in the NFL, the kicker has remained remarkably consistent in this, his 21st NFL season.
While Vinatieri himself is the one most responsible for his many years of great success, he's always been someone who's willing to share the credit. And in a long Bleacher Report feature in which Dan Pompei likens Vinatieri to Forrest Gump, Vinatieri explained how all three of his Patriots head coaches helped make him a better kicker and a better pro.
Vinatieri said that in his rookie season, he was told by Bill Parcells that he'd be kicking every kick in the team's final preseason game, essentially a sink-or-swim moment in Vinatieri's battle to win the kicking job over Matt Bahr in 1996.
"Playing for [Parcells] helped me develop my mind-set," Vinatieri told Pompei. "I learned I had to work my butt off every day to stay on the team. It helped me understand the realism of football."
When Pete Carroll became Vinatieri's head coach in New England, the kicker was fined for failing to wear pads in his pants on a day when Carroll demanded all players do so. The kicker managed to turn that experience into a positive.
And when the Patriots became Bill Belichick's team, Vinatieri was already a veteran. But he still had much to learn.
Belichick once told Vinatieri to make sure that he carried enough shoes with him to be prepared for any environment.
"To this day," Pompei wrote, "Vinatieri shows up at every game with four pairs of shoes -- two with normal, molded cleats for his kicking foot, separate plant-foot shoes, a pair with longer cleats for grass and a shoe with a bottom for turf."
It's likely that Vinatieri could have figured out many of those life lessons on his own, but it speaks to his personality and character that he's willing to share in the credit for his own unparalleled success, all of these years later.
