Several months later, said Jake Bates, "I still feel that miss." Late in his first season as a professional kicker with the Michigan Panthers, Bates had a chance to hit a 53-yard game-winner against Birmingham. He hadn't missed from that direction in warmups, so he didn't bother with his typical pre-kick routine. "I was too confident," he said, "and I pushed it a little bit right."
"That was definitely a learning moment to take every kick as its own, and put all your focus into each kick as it comes," said Bates.
In his rookie season with the Lions, Bates is 14-for-14 on field goals -- the only qualified kicker who's yet to miss. He was named NFC Special Teams Player of the Week after drilling a pair of clutch fourth-quarter kicks in Detroit's win over the Texans on Sunday Night Football, a 58-yarder to tie it and a 52-yarder at the buzzer to seal the Lions' seventh straight win. He smiles so wide that he squints, but he does not blink.
Thrust into the starting job when veteran kicker Michael Badgley suffered a season-ending injury in training camp, Bates sank a game-tying field goal in the final seconds of his NFL debut in the Lions' overtime win over the Rams. He nailed a game-winner as the clock ticked down in a hostile environment in Minnesota. He recites Hebrews 12:1 in his head before each kick and reminds himself "to not make it bigger than it needs to be, because I’ve been on the other side of that."
And then he takes the field with what he calls "childlike joy," tied to the knowledge that "it’s a kid’s game that we get to play as adults." His mien is serene.
"He gets away from everybody and he can kind of get in his own head, in a good way, and shut everything else out," Dan Campbell said this week. "I do feel like there’s something to him when you put him in a competitive setting, he’s pretty good about that."
Lions special teams coordinator Dave Fipp was still getting to know Bates a few months ago when he approached the 25-year-old kicker in the middle of a preseason game: "I go up to him to say something and man, you could tell he wanted no part of nothing in that moment," Fipp said this week. "He was so locked in and focused."
"The truth is, for me, on game-day I stay away from him," said Fipp. "I watch him in warmups if there’s any pointers to give at that time, just subtle things that I think might help, and then I say it. If not, I let him go, I’ll stay working on other guys around him, but the rest of it’s on him. Really, I credit him for being highly focused and highly concentrated, and obviously he’s done a great job.”
Bates laughs, because he was "completely different" before games in his days as a soccer player. When he pivoted in college to football, he said he brought the same "rah-rah" approach to his job as a kick-off specialist in his first few games at Texas State -- "and it did not work. I was like, I gotta figure something out." He started listening to calm music -- Christian, country, some slow rap -- to achieve the right frame of mind.
The moment Badgley went down this summer, Campbell turned up the heat on Bates. He forced his kicker into as many stressful situations as possible in practice. Campbell had to learn if Bates would break. He hasn't. The tests are ongoing, one Texan prodding another. Campbell said this week that "I try to apply a little pressure, and I have since camp, just in my own way. Stuff that I know would probably irritate him. Just to make him not worry about it." Bates smiled when asked about it.
"There’s been a couple things he’s done," he said. "He’ll get super close and just stare at me. He’s a big dude, obviously, he's got his hands on his knees, staring at me. I’ve noticed that. One time he yelled at me to hurry up, but I just keep telling myself to go through my normal routine. I was like, let’s make the kick and then we can worry about that later. That was early, but I remember that one. And then maybe there’s more -- I just stay to myself."
"He’s good about that, he really is," said Campbell. "And he just continues to get better and better. He’s a creature of habit."
Bates will miss a field goal this season. (He missed an extra point in Detroit's Week 3 win in Arizona.) If and when he does, it won't be due to nerves. That's a comforting thought for Campbell, who doesn't have to think twice about calling on his kicker in high-stakes moments. He passed up a couple field goals in the NFC title game last season and the Lions lost by three.
On top of that, the Lions' field goal range is wider than it's been in years. Bates, a former center back in soccer who was once named National Player of the Week at Central Arkansas, already has one of the bigger legs in the NFL. When the Lions were trying to cobble together a drive at the end of the first half in Houston last week, Jared Goff said they were ready to give Bates a go from at least 65 yards: "He makes them in practice all the time."
At the end of training camp the last few years, the Lions have held a Fowling competition. It's a bracket-style tournament with 32 teams. This year, Bates, special teams assistant Jett Modkins and former Lions long snapper Scott Daly made it to the finals. With everyone gathered around watching, Bates said it felt like being in the middle of a stadium: "That was pretty sweet. It was intense. I remember going into it like, 'Don’t let yourself get too competitive. Stay calm, stay calm.' It was fun. Just throwing a ball."
Bates, as Campbell recalls, "made three big-time throws in front of the whole team. There’s a lot going on and boy, he nailed it." Goff took notice, too: "He’s not kicking, he’s throwing, but it’s still a high-pressure situation, and he was executing."
"You can look to that as part of who he is," said Goff. "He doesn’t see these moments as too big. He’s under control and has such a great demeanor to him as a young guy who’s just starting out in this league."
Bates' team lost in the finals, for the record. (The champs have yet to be publicly identified.) The Lions can't stop winning, and Bates is partly to thank. He may have shaved some paint off the uprights in Houston, but his kicks were true nonetheless -- "right down the middle, as far as I'm concerned," Campbell said after the win.
"Fipp’s done a great job with just, ‘Hey man, trust your leg. Trust that this ball’s not going to move much because you've got such a powerful leg,'" Campbell said.
"He’s just taking care of his job," said Fipp, "and I think that’s a big part of his success so far. Obviously, really happy with where he is."
As Bates said back in camp, "This is where I prayed to be."