@ossobuco,
Kickers, it seems to me, are a strange breed in American football. They tend to be the smallest players on the team, not raised to engage in physical combat.
They stand around on the sidelines, in their un-dirtied uniforms, kicking extra points after their team has scored a TD and just prior to a TV commercial break. They rarely miss one of those.
They are as unnoticed as a comma in a run on sentence.
But then; but then at the end of very close games where their team-mates, thousands of pounds of team-mates, have been battling for four quarters, on comes the field goal kicker. He watches the ball get snapped from the center to the holder. And then he kicks it towards the goal post from, perhaps, 50 yards away.
He probably knows, an instant after his foot launches the ball, whether or not the kick is good. But for the rest of us, it floats in the air for a few agonizing seconds, with the outcome of the game depending on this one play.
And the kicker is either the hero or the goat.
It must be a strange life for the smallest player on a team of giants.
