PATRIOTS: No foot rest for Vinatieri

Forty-five-year-old Adam Vinatieri is still kicking after all these years. Vinatieri and the Indianapolis Colts are heading to Foxboro to play the Patriots on Thursday night.

FOXBORO – No foot rest is necessary for this old man.

At 45 years of age, Adam Vinatieri is alive and kickin’.

“Certainly, in my opinion, the greatest kicker in the game,” Patriots head coach Bill Belichick told the Indianapolis media during a conference call on Tuesday. “Not just for his longevity and production but … the magnitude of some of the kicks that he made and the difficulty.”

You could say Vinatieri’s next stop is Canton, Ohio.

You could say that, but it wouldn’t be correct, for Vinatieri isn’t stopping.

“He’s a Hall of Famer,” Patriots special teams captain Matthew Slater said. “I think this weekend he broke the record for most field goals made in NFL history. The big kicks that he made here over the course of his career – unbelievable. The consistency, the guy’s in his 23rd year in the league. I mean, he’s been playing longer than some of these guys have been alive around here. That really speaks volumes to who he is, the career he’s put together, and he’ll be in Canton one day.”

The son of a Hall of Famer (former St. Louis-Los Angeles Rams offensive tackle Jackie Slater), a seven-time special teams Pro Bowler and a true student of the game, Slater is right on all counts, of course.

With a 42-yard field goal late in the first half of this past Sunday’s 37-34 overtime loss to Houston at Lucas Oil Stadium, the Indianapolis Colts place-kicker passed Pro Football Hall of Famer Morten Andersen for the most field goals in NFL history with 566 (he later added his 567th in the game).

With 2,519 points heading into Thursday night’s game with the Patriots at Gillette Stadium, Vinatieri is only 25 shy of the 2,544 Andersen put up while kicking for five different teams from 1982-2007 and is well on his way to becoming the league’s all-time leading scorer later this year.

Vinatieri doesn’t kick off (punter Rigoberto Sanchez handles those chores for the Colts), hasn’t in 10 years, but approaching his 46th birthday (Dec. 28) his aim is still true: This season, he’s converted 8 of 9 field-goal attempts (his lone miss was from 55 yards) and all eight of his PATs for 32 points.

Sure, he has the luxury of kicking in a dome at home, but give the man his props: It wasn’t all that long ago that Vinatieri set the league record for the most consecutive field goals made, 44, from 2015-2016.

Oh, yes, as for that age thing?

Vinatieri is the oldest player in the game today, the fourth-oldest in league history behind only George Blanda (48), Anderson (47) and John Carney (46).

And to think that it all started here, with the Bill Parcells-coached Patriots signing South Dakota State University’s all-time leading scorer after he’d earned a roster spot with the Amsterdam Admirals of the old World League of American Football. The year was 1996. To put that in perspective, consider this: Patriots Ja’Whaun Bentley, Keion Crossen and Christian Sam were all born in 1996.

Remaining with the Patriots through 2005, Vinatieri left New England as the franchise’s all-time leading scorer, his 1,158 points eclipsing Gino Cappelletti’s 1,130 (Stephen Gostkowski, who was selected in the fourth round of the 2006 draft to succeed him has long since surpassed him with 1,642 and counting). Signing with the Colts as an unrestricted free agent on March 22, 2006, who knew Vinatieri was destined to become the only player in NFL history to score 1,000 points with two different teams?

Even more than quantity, however, Vinatieri left behind a legacy filled with quality, his footprints all over the Patriots’ Super Bowl XXXVI, XXXVIII and XXXIX championships, no kick in NFL history more dramatic than his 45-yard field goal with 27 seconds left in regulation to force overtime in the team’s 16-13 “Snow Bowl” playoff victory over Oakland (he ended it with a 23-yarder in OT) on Jan. 19, 2002, in the final game played at Foxboro Stadium.

“I would say it was by far the greatest kick I have ever seen,” Belichick said. “The conditions were very difficult. There were probably three to four inches of snow on the ground. It was a soft snow that, kind of, didn’t go away. I mean, there was no way to get around it. The magnitude of the kick was significant. It’s got to be the greatest kick of all time, certainly that I’ve seen.

“But there were many besides that – the kick in the Super Bowl (the 48-yarder that gave the Patriots a 20-17 victory over the-then St. Louis Rams as time expired in Super Bowl XXXVI) and the kick in the Carolina Super Bowl (a 41-yarder with four seconds to play for a 32-29 win in Super Bowl XXXVIII). There were just big games after big games … Adam came through for us with some enormous kicks.”

Tom Brady remembers.

“I was lucky enough to be here when he was here early in his career and I thought so much of him,” the 41-year-old quarterback said. “He was just so clutch. He always kind of made the kick and that’s what the mark of a great kicker is and certainly that one (was clutch).

“Thinking back a long time ago but it was just when you see it now, it’s pretty remarkable that he made it and what that meant for this organization. What a lucky person to be able to be involved in that Snow Bowl and to watch that kick go through.”

More than 16-1/2 years later, they’re still going through.

“Honestly, it doesn’t seem like there is much sign of him slowing down,” Belichick said. “The ball continues to go right in the middle of the uprights. It never curves. It doesn’t hook. It just goes straight down the middle. So he just has an unbelievable level of consistency.”