When he was at the University of Memphis, Stephen Gostkowski — destined to become Adam Vinatieri’s successor as Patriots kicker — hosted a watch party for Super Bowl XXXVIII, which capped the 2003 NFL season.
As Vinatieri, who had missed his previous two field goals, trotted out to attempt a game-winner from 41 yards with nine seconds left, some of Gostkowski’s guests grew boisterous in undertaking the kicking equivalent of tugging on Superman’s cape.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, he’s going to miss it.’ And I was like, ‘There’s no way in hell he’s going to miss this kick. This is Adam Vinatieri. This thing is going right down the middle,’ ” recalled Gostkowski. “And, sure enough, he proved me right.”
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Vinatieri’s second Super Bowl-winning kick split the uprights, as the Patriots defeated the Panthers, 32-29, dawning a dynasty that never would’ve existed without his Excalibur-like fateful foot.
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Clutch kicks produced the calling card that placed Vinatieri’s call to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Enshrined on Saturday, he joins Jan Stenerud and Morten Andersen as the only full-time kickers to earn entry to pro football Valhalla in Canton, Ohio.
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Already enshrined in local sports lore, Automatic Adam remains one of the most clutch athletes in Boston sports history. Vinatieri is part of an intimate collection of Boston athletes that lowered your pulse and upped your certitude with the game on the line: Tom Brady, David Ortiz, Larry Bird, etc. That feeling of confidence Vinatieri inspired constitutes the essence of his greatness. It heralds it more than all the statistical check marks on his CV — he’s the NFL’s all-time leader in points (2,673), field goals (599), field goal attempts (715), and consecutive field goals made (44).
But, in this age of sports discourse, everything requires stats. Here you go: Vinatieri owns an NFL-record 29 game-winners.
In the list of most important figures of the Patriots’ dynasty, it should go Brady, Bill Belichick, and then Vinatieri. The legends of the other two look awfully different if Vinatieri doesn’t drill his Immaculate Conversion — a tying 45-yard legwork of art on the snow-covered canvas of Foxboro Stadium against the Raiders in the AFC Divisional playoffs. Brady said he feared that, if he and the 2001 Patriots lost that game, the franchise would’ve turned back to Drew Bledsoe.
We’ll never know, thanks to Vinatieri, the Brady of kickers. Or, maybe, Brady is the Vinatieri of quarterbacks.
How different is Belichick’s oeuvre if Vinatieri doesn’t drill the 48-yard game-winner against the Rams to deliver one of the greatest upsets in NFL history in Super Bowl XXXVI?
That kick stopped hearts and changed minds. It ushered in an era of good feelings and rolling rallies. It’s not a stretch to say that Vinatieri helped alter the sports-consuming mien of an entire region. We went from fearing inevitable defeat to flaunting our faith and banners. A dozen more Boston sports championships flowed following Vinatieri’s golden boot.
It was the first of four Super Bowls Vinatieri won, three during his 10 seasons with the Patriots, and one with the, ugh, Colts. Proof, kickers can be consummate winners.
Those Patriots teams knew if it came down to a kick, it was a No. 4-gone conclusion.
“Yeah, you hate to say you take it for granted. But, certainly, it was something that we never really worried about,” said Patriots coach Mike Vrabel, a key player on those teams. “We just always figured he’s going to make them, and none bigger than the one [in the Snow Bowl].
“Some of us could barely run, and he made a 40-something-yard kick. It was like, having been out on that field, how does that even happen?”
Adam Vinatieri was announced as part of the Pro Football Hall of Fame class of 2026 during the NFL Honors award show in February.
Adam Vinatieri was announced as part of the Pro Football Hall of Fame class of 2026 during the NFL Honors award show in February.
Vinatieri provided his best work when it mattered most. In 2006, after heading to Indianapolis as a free agent, he set the postseason record for points (49) and field goals (14), as Peyton Manning lifted his first Lombardi Trophy. It’s still galling for Patriots fans to recognize that their clutch kicker spent more years (14) with a horseshoe on his helmet than as a Patriot. Thanks, Bill.
Kickers treasure their fraternity. It’s a job that lends itself to commiseration and lamentation. Paradoxically, they can be viewed as both the least legitimate NFL players and the ones most responsible for defeats.
Gostkowski said Vinatieri earned the entire position greater respect.
“Obviously, Adam had the best kicking career of any guy in the history of the league,” said Gostkowski, who broke Vinatieri’s Patriots scoring mark and sits second in NFL history in playoff field goals (41) to Vinatieri’s 56.
“[Kickers] just keep getting better and better, but he was pretty much to me like the start of people looking at kickers as weapons instead of like liabilities.
“There’s no kicker more deserving than him, and, as much crap as we take — kickers, punters, and long snappers — it’s nice when one guy gets the glory and gets respected on that kind of level. So, I’m really pumped to see him go in and very excited for him.”
Vrabel paid Vinatieri the ultimate compliment a kicker can get.
“It wasn’t like he was off by himself all the time,” Vrabel said. “He was one of the guys. He wasn’t like the lonely kicker. Just the way that he worked: He lifted hard, he worked out hard, trained hard, was knowledgeable in football.”
Deservedly, Vinatieri is now just one of the guys in Canton, Ohio.