On Wednesday, legendary Patriots and Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri announced his retirement after more than two decades of NFL action.
In the less than 24 hours since, Bill Belichick has made his feelings quite clear on his former kicker and his place in NFL history: Vinatieri is the GOAT.
That continued during Thursday morning’s OTA Zoom session with New England reporters, when Belichick’s first comments were about Vinatieri and the impact he had on the foundation of the Patriots dynasty.
“I’ll just start with a couple quick comments on Adam,” Belichick began. “I’ve been…was very fortunate as a head coach to have some outstanding kickers from [Matt] Stover to Adam to Steve [Gostkowski] to Nick [Folk], most recently. But Adam’s really, in my mind, the best of all time. His consistency, his ability to handle clutch situations and make the biggest kicks and just the longevity of his career, almost a quarter of a century, and just consistency is just remarkable.
“Obviously the first kick in a Snow Bowl to tie it, it has to go down as one of the great kicks of all time, if not the greatest. And then, two game-winning kicks in Super Bowls just doesn't get any bigger than that but one thing with Adam, you never felt the pressure of the moment and he certainly didn't seem to, so it gave me and our team great confidence and again, I was very, very fortunate to have a player of his caliber in my time as a head coach. And then as I said, before and after we had some pretty good ones too, but Adam was really, really special. So, tribute to him and his great career and one that I'm sure will place him in the Hall of Fame in five years.
That's where he should be.”
While the Snow Bowl kick against the Raiders and game-winning boot in Super Bowl 36 rightfully get a ton of attention, Belichick went on to explain why the Super Bowl game-winner Vinatieri had to beat the Panthers a couple years later may not get the credit it deserves.
“I think the Ram game was again a long kick, but I would say the Carolina kick, one of the things about that was just their rush and they had blocked a kick earlier in the game, they blocked a lot of kicks that year,” Belichick explained. “That's probably one of the all-time great field goal rush teams. Those guys were long, strong, explosive off the ball and were hard to block. And so, not only the kick, but the kick against a really good rush, having to get the ball up, I mean a bad kick there, that could easily have gone the other way. So, I think that was really probably one of the underrated kicks that Adam had, just because of the degree of difficulty on the other side of the ball.
“I thought the Carolina kick was an underrated, great kick. I mean, a game-winning kick in a Super Bowl, I don't know how you can say that's underrated, but that was a good rush team.”
Belichick also reflected on Vinatieri’s humble football beginnings.
Undrafted out of South Dakota State. Time with the World League of American Football. And plenty of missed kicks early in his NFL career that could have been over before it had a chance to reach its eventual Hall of Fame-worthy heights.
“Adam’s gone to the absolute top of his profession and position, and nobody's done more or done it better than he has and that's a credit to his hard work, mental toughness and his ability to have that kind of longevity, which encompasses a lot of a lot of things, but he's done them all,” Belichick concluded.