In the modern game, coaches’ expectations are soaring, inflated by three decades of kickers’ increasing proficiency. “There are only 32 regular positions for 32 teams for guys to kick field goals, but everybody knows there are a lot more kickers than that who can kick well,” says Tim Hasselbeck, a former NFL quarterback who is now a football analyst for ESPN. “If you’re a kicker, you’re all alone. … It still comes down to those one or two kicks in a game. And if one guy fails, there’s always somebody else to take over.”
The latest wave of specialists have been honing their craft since high school, beneficiaries of youth kicking camps, personal lessons and a greater understanding of the soccer-style techniques introduced in the ’60s. Even middling collegiate prospects generally make more than 70 percent of their field goal attempts, while grizzled NFL outcasts await second chances that come only when established kickers are on the brink of losing their jobs.
In November, Pittsburgh Steelers kicker Jeff Reed was quickly let go after missing a 26-yarder in a loss to New England. Shaun Suisham, the former Redskins kicker who had earlier won Cundiff’s Cowboys job only to lose it himself, took over Reed’s spot.
No one else on a football team – or in major professional athletics for that matter – is so easily disposable. A starting NFL quarterback, a prince in modern American sports, thrives for years off dreams about nothing more than his potential. For many teams, a young, interception-prone quarterback is a possible Hope diamond. Even a receiver can suffer a long spell of bad hands and at least hang on through the season. By contrast, kickers are accessories, utterly interchangeable.
Non-kickers typically express little sympathy for the kickers’ odyssey. “They don’t have to do the same things as other players do,” Hasselbeck says. “When a lot of team meetings are going on, I’ve seen those guys in the equipment room shopping online or playing cards or video games.” He chuckles. “They work very hard, but you also have to remember they have a lot of time to work on nothing but their craft. They just have that one thing to do: kick. The basic feeling of guys on a team, I think, is that kickers are supposed to make their kicks.”
After Cundiff’s release by the Cowboys, suitors were fickle. Tampa Bay signed him before the 2006 preseason but cut him long before training camp, when the club re-signed its regular kicker. New Orleans signed him late that year but turned to him to handle kickoff chores only.
By the end of the season, New Orleans had said goodbye to him, too. Over the next two years, he had 15 unsuccessful tryouts with NFL teams. Eventually, he couldn’t even bring himself to watch games on TV.
He and Nicole had moved to Phoenix, and Cundiff occupied himself by taking MBA courses at Arizona State and working for a venture capital firm. Only in his late 20s, he wondered whether he had already been pegged as washed up. Then while working out on a football field at a community college in 2008, he exchanged hellos with a well-known local kicking instructor named Gary Zauner.
A former special teams coordinator for the Vikings, Ravens and Arizona Cardinals, Zauner had built his reputation as a kicking consultant for a half-dozen teams. As he puts it: “Golfers have swing coaches – kickers need swing coaches, too; they get out of whack sometimes, all of ’em, even the best.”
The Wisconsin transplant had declared an end to his coaching days, happy to bask with his wife in the Arizona heat and to give lessons to young dreamers and struggling veterans alike. On the side, Zauner ran annual kicking combines, or showcases, for NFL rookie and free-agent kickers, who paid him for the privilege of competing. The combines gave the kickers a chance to show off their skills and provided scouts an opportunity to size up new and old talent.
Cundiff told Zauner that he needed another pair of eyes to study his form.
“Billy’s swing was off – I could see that in a hurry during our lesson,” Zauner said. Cundiff’s biggest flaw was his “crunching,” said Zauner, who demonstrated, looking like a man doing a sit-up. “At impact with the ball, Billy was keeping his head too much down and back. It had him bending and crunching his body a lot, which made him push the ball to the right. Then, when he tried compensating, he hooked the ball badly to the left. We worked to get him to … develop a nice relaxed upright torso. It made him straighter on the target line.”
But Zauner’s most important contribution to Cundiff’s career came at the end of their two lessons together. Zauner suggested that Cundiff join about 30 other kickers at his March 2009 free-agent kicking combine. Scouts from 26 NFL teams would be present, as well as others from football’s minor leagues, the lower-profile, unglamorous United Football League and the Canadian Football League.
Cundiff resisted. “They already know who I am,” he said.
A blunt man, Zauner replied, “People aren’t beating down your door, Billy.”
After his agent pushed, Cundiff relented. He performed well at the combine. Five months later, during the 2009 preseason, the Detroit Lions called, and Cundiff briefly filled in for their hurt place-kicker, Jason Hanson. Cut after Hanson’s return, Cundiff was off to Cleveland to temporarily replace the Browns’ injured veteran, Phil Dawson. His short, successful stint in Cleveland earned him a call from Ravens officials, who, discouraged by the struggles of the team’s kicker, Steve Hauschka, soon signed him.
In hopes of enhancing his concentration and confidence under pressure, Cundiff had long before turned for help to a sports psychologist. “He works with a lot of military guys,” Cundiff says. “Special Forces types. It’s an approach that gets away from that California hot tub stuff. … I think it’s done quite a bit for me. … You look for everything you can do, every edge.”
Joining the Ravens last season during week 11 of a 16-game NFL schedule, Cundiff made 12 of 17 field goal attempts for the team, just over 70 percent, with his longest field goal coming from 46 yards. The stats were unremarkable, but in November he made the most important kick he had attempted in four years: a short game-winning field goal in overtime against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Nicole was exultant, but Cundiff knew better than to celebrate. “Let’s be honest,” he says. “I needed to make that kick just to stay on the team.”
Zauner exits his house in a Phoenix suburb, on his way to a kicking lesson. He glances at a few snake skins that have been shed in his garden, then wheels around, having caught a glimpse of something moving. A skipping roadrunner, as cute as its namesake cartoon character, scurries across his driveway, disappearing behind a cactus. “You know what those cute things do?” he says. “They take that beak of theirs, ram it right down on a rattlesnake’s head, knock it out and then eat it. Cute has nothin’ to do with it. They’re tough. … Dominance. Dominance wins. It’s tough out there. My guys have to see that, too. Only some will make it.”
At 60, Zauner is proudly old school when it comes to attitude and discipline. If a student misses a series of kicks, the last thing he wants to hear from the guy is that he’s just having a bad day. “A bad day? You can afford a bad kick, but you can’t afford a bad day,” he says. “You have a bad day, and you’ll never get a job.” He doesn’t want to see someone going through the motions at one of his lessons, either. He has his lines ready, the way other people carry around canisters of Mace. “You know what, man? Practice … doesn’t … make … perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.” He regularly points at the half-dozen or so footballs that, having been kicked down the field, now need to be retrieved. “Go get the balls,” he tells his students cheerfully.
For this, along with two days of lessons and videotape reviews of their performances, the dreamers pay him $1,200.
And it has been worth it, in many cases. Some of the game’s most gifted young kickers have come through these doors. Just the week before, in early October, the Jacksonville Jaguars’ Josh Scobee, who to that point in the season had not missed a kick, publicly praised Zauner for helping to refine his kicking stroke. The Oakland Raiders’ Sebastian Janikowski sought Zauner out two years ago, after which, coincidence or not, his accuracy rate soared again, leading later to a $16 million contract.
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