Kicker Comparisons Come to Mind

FOXBOROUGH, Mass.

Stephen Gostkowski's locker was palpably vacant. A pair of faded jeans hung limply from a hook. A kicking shoe sat on a bench, footless and wilted as a ballet slipper. His shoulder pads lay uninhabited on an overhead shelf. As for the man himself, he was nothing but a state of mind.

Gostkowski was off somewhere, sequestered in his own head. What the New England Patriots' rookie kicker might be thinking was a matter of pure speculation, but the obvious thing to deduce from his unoccupied cubbyhole was that he was trying not to think about much at all. There was no need to go looking for him, either, because he was off limits. "You won't find him with a GPS system," said a Patriots employee, firmly.

Gostkowski's mental state, and his ability to hold up in a duel against Adam Vinatieri, could be the determining factor in Sunday's AFC championship game against the Indianapolis Colts. For that reason, the Patriots weren't about to let anyone unscrew his skull and climb into it this week.

An NFL kicker is a vulnerable subconscious with a big toe attached. It was tempting, if a little graceless, to stare at Gostkowski's locker and try to discern something from it. Was there anything to learn about his state of mind from the inanimate attitude of a down jacket on a hanger, or a row of gray hoodies? Probably not, but Gostkowski's locker has been the subject of mind-wrenching attempts at telekinesis ever since some Boston reporters spotted a bottle of Pepto-Bismol in it a couple of weeks ago. For some reason, possibly a rookie mistake, Gostkowski left the bottle plainly visible in his locker. The vivid pink liquid was like a homing beacon, attracting all sorts of attention, and leading to speculation that the pressure was getting to the kid.

How could it not? Gostkowski is a 22-year-old, fourth-round draft pick out of Memphis, yet he has been thrust in the position of replacing one of the greatest clutch kickers of all time in Vinatieri, whom he will face on the opposing sideline Sunday. It's the scarcely mentioned yet unavoidable topic in the Patriots' clubhouse: Will Coach Bill Belichick live to regret letting Vinatieri go as a free agent after 10 seasons, only to watch the Colts sign him to a five-year deal worth $12 million?

Belichick, with a voice as flat and dry as the rustling of paper, has refused to make comparisons between the departed great and his rookie. "I think he is a player that can do what we are going to ask him to do, or I wouldn't put him out there," he says.

Nobody is better than the Patriots, who will be playing in their fourth AFC championship game in six years, at taking the air out of a controversial topic. Their news conferences were as eventful as turnstiles, and their responses rote.

Question: How has your kicker handled replacing Adam?

Belichick: Our kicker has come in and kicked well all year.

But the glaring, inescapable fact of the matter is that Vinatieri iced two Super Bowl victories for the Patriots with game-winning field goals, and kicked 19 fourth-quarter or overtime game-winners in all -- and now they could be on the other end of his shoe. "He's not going to miss," Patriots linebacker Mike Vrabel said. "We're going to have to block a kick for him to miss one."

While the Patriots tried to suck the oxygen out of the kicker conversation, the Colts chattered freely about the tangible and intangible confidence Vinatieri has brought to their sideline. When they needed five field goals to beat the Baltimore Ravens last week, including a 51-yarder, all Coach Tony Dungy had to say to Vinatieri was, "Are we close enough?" Vinatieri replied, "We've got it, we're in good shape."

Dungy says, "You just feel like he's going to make everything when he goes out there, and in games like this it's necessary."

It's simply hard to imagine that Vinatieri's experience vs. Gostkowski's inexperience won't affect the decision-making on both sidelines. The Patriots led the league in fourth-down attempts this season, as they brought Gostkowski along slowly. He went a solid 20 for 26 during the regular season, and he has steadily improved as the stakes have risen, going 6 for 6 in the postseason. But the fact remains that he will be playing in only the 19th game of his career, and he had never actually kicked a game-winner until just last week. When his 31-yarder with 1 minute 10 seconds left gave the Patriots the 24-21 victory over the Chargers, you got the feeling that it was reassuring to everyone concerned to get it over with.

"That's a game-winner, if that's what they were waiting for," his holder, Matt Cassel, pointed out.

This much the Patriots know already about Gostkowski: He is a nice kid from Baton Rouge, and a talented and tough-minded young kicker who has gotten them this far even though he is still nine days shy of his 23rd birthday. He's an imposingly physical kicker, at 210 pounds, and a good all-around athlete who keeps a baseball glove and running shoes in his locker -- and not because his subconscious wants to play another game, or run away.

When the Patriots drafted him last spring, he said: "If you can't handle pressure, you shouldn't be in the business. You want to be able to kick that game-winning kick, because that's where people fall in love with you, kicking the ones that count. Everybody can make a million field goals and then miss the big one, and that's all [people] think about."

Then, it seemed like a game statement. Now, it seems portentous. It's one thing to talk about the pressure of a game-winning kick, and quite another to experience it -- and still yet another to be the focal point of an awkward, rivalrous situation you didn't create, and in which you could wind up the cringing goat. There was no deep psychological conclusion to draw from Gostkowski's empty locker. It simply suggested that he's in this thing alone.