Adam Vinatieri will go down as one of the greatest kickers in NFL history, but that doesn't mean things have always been great during his career.
Appearing on The Pat McAfee Show Wednesday, the 48-year-old recalled how he was treated as a rookie on the Patriots in 1996.
Vinatieri noted veteran Matt Bahr was a Bill Parcells favorite and the last kicker drafted by the Patriots -- Scott Sisson -- was cut after one season.
“(Parcells) tried to make it as difficult as he could on me," he said. "He challenged me pretty much every day. There was a lot of times where the team was going to do no conditioning or maybe double conditioning depending on (whether he made a 50-yard kick). He would stand in my kicking spot or he would purposefully get in my way when we were doing stuff. In a weird way, I really appreciated that because it just added extra pressure in training camp.”
At the time Bill Belichick was the defensive backs coach and he too made it tough on the kicker.
“For the longest time I didn’t have a name,” Vinatieri said. “Belichick would either call me, ‘Hey 4 or hey [expletive].’ It took probably about a full year before either he learned my name, or maybe before I earned enough respect from him to call me by my name.
“I still say, Coach Belichick, I have to put him on top of my list of all-time great coaches. The proof is in the pudding. I learned a lot from him. I watched him take the best out of every player. You might be an average player. You might be an elite player. But he got the best out of every guy and they won a lot of championships because of it.”
Vinatieri also appeared to announce his retirement on the show after 24 years in the league.