Top 50 Adam Vinatieri Quotes

The mental aspect of kicking is the difficult part. Physically, we still have to be in shape and perform on the field, but the thing that separates the ones who make it versus the ones who don’t is definitely the mental side.

I had great grades. Why? Because I studied twice as long and twice as hard as everybody else.

Cleaning out your locker the first week of January is not a whole lot of fun and it always leaves a lousy taste in your mouth.

The X’s and O’s with Bill Belichick is pretty amazing.

People think kickers in general kick field goals. But kickers are actually good athletes; we run and work out just like the rest of the football team.

Preparation meets opportunity, and that causes success if you’re prepared to do your job and you practice a lot, more times than not you’re going to be successful.

Indianapolis is home to me and my family.

Obviously we’re all our own biggest critics.

Ask a receiver, can we take his gloves off because he’s catching the ball too well? Nobody is going to be overly happy about that.

The older you get, the more difficult it is to keep your body right.

In golf, there are times when you hit a ball so perfectly that you never feel the ball leave your club.

Will it make the game safer for people by moving the extra point back to a 43-yarder? If anything, players are going to rush harder because they’re thinking, ‘That far of a field goal-type try, we have to go after blocking it more.’

I feel that as long as I’m an asset and not a liability I’m still loving the game as much as I ever have.

I have to admit I’ve dreamed of kicking the game-winning field goal in the Super Bowl many times. That’s the fun thing about being a kicker, you never know when it’s going to come down to your kick deciding the game.

In the end, the Super Bowl is just a football game. You try to take a couple of big, deep breaths and convince yourself it’s just another game. You try to, anyway.

If you do something enough with purpose long enough, you’re eventually going to get really good at it.

It’s fun running out onto the field. It’s much more fun playing in the playoffs.

Living in Indy, you have to be a race fan.

NFL Europe helped me quite a bit. It was a situation where I came out of college and spent the first few months of my career over in Europe.

Coach Parcells challenged me a lot in my rookie year, and not just in games. Almost every day in practice, he’d stand right beside me as he called for the field-goal team to take the field.

As a football player, as a kid and as a professional athlete the moment of playing in the Super Bowl and winning a Super Bowl, that’s what you play your whole career for.

I’d love to be on ‘Man vs. Wild.’

One thing I always noticed out of Bill Parcells is that he always wanted a good class of blue-collar, hardworking guys that he felt like he could win games with that way… When the difficult times came about he knew who was going to perform.

On teams that have won championships and got to the big game, there’s a certain vibe and feel in that locker room. Everyone talks about how there’s a brotherhood in that locker room, there’s not a lot of dissent, there’s not guys that go off on their own. It’s a team atmosphere.

Every kicker that’s in this league has kicked a million or so balls. You just have that swing; you know what you have to do, and you go out there and do it.

I get to put on a helmet, go out in front of 70,000 people and play a kids game. And they pay me to do it.

I have to make sure I get eight hours of solid sleep a night.

When you get one blocked and another partially blocked, you’ve got to see if you’re hitting them low or what.

I’m always my worst critic.

Making the playoffs is hard to come by, so if you can help contribute to your team’s success it’s always a successful time.

I was at the crossroads of my life when I was 7 years old.

I was born with a shotgun in my hand, chasing pheasant through the cornfields. My dad probably started taking me out when I was 4, 5 or 6 years old.

As kickers, it’s all about being able to block out the crowd noise, being able to block out certain aspects of the game, and just do your job no matter what the circumstances are.

I know my body needs to have the proper nutrition so that I can keep kicking at a high level. The same goes with sleep.

I first learned about kicking under pressure in 1996, my rookie year with the Patriots. I was signed as a free agent by a team that already had Matt Bahr, one of the best kickers around. To win the job, I had to show coach Bill Parcells that I could make kicks when they counted. That process started in training camp.

Proof is the product that you put on the field.

I don’t know if I’m a clutch hunter, but I’m an avid one.

I learned early that it’s very important to approach every single kick you attempt, even those in practice, as if it were in a game.

Yeah, at the end of the year you always sit back and you evaluate, and unless you have a perfect season with no misses there is always room for improvement.

Sometimes we all need a little time to decompress and think about stuff.

I mean, if I was going to leave New England, it wasn’t going to be just for the sake of leaving.

I’ve always been a very opinionated guy, an outgoing personality.

I don’t think past experiences guarantee anything and I don’t think you can rest on your morals.

Every time you step on the field you have to reestablish and re-prove yourself.

I’ve played with some of the best that have ever played, obviously. I don’t know if there is anybody that is a better technician than Peyton Manning. Tom Brady is another quarterback that I was fortunate enough to play with for a bunch of years.

If anything, make a 50-yard field goal worth four points instead of three.

Sometimes you have to work through some things, and the mental side of kicking is definitely there.

Coming from a small South Dakota school, it was a different route to get to the NFL. I went from South Dakota State to the World League of American Football with the Amsterdam Admirals, and fortunately I did well enough there that the New England Patriots decided to sign me and give me a chance.

I’ve kicked a lot of balls over the years.

There’s a lot of fun things about this sport, but trying to hoist that trophy at the end is what we all play for.