The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
RELYING ON THE 12TH MAN — AND A 41-YEAR-OLD KICKER
Tough-minded kicker has given Falcons best season of career at 41.
FLOWERY BRANCH — Matt Bryant’s mirror is different than any other reflective surface. He looks in it and sees not the fellow of normal, workaday dimensions who’s just on the shady side of 40 and who, honestly, could just as easily play without a helmet. He sees a football player.
It was that way in high school in Texas, when colleges were on the hunt for kickers and Bryant kept filling out questionnaires with his experience at linebacker.
It remains that way today, even if he became the NFL’s leading scorer in 2016 and earned his first Pro Bowl invitation in his 15th NFL season thanks only to the punch of his right leg.
Certainly from the neck up, the Falcons kicker will match his grit with anyone.
“It’s something you have or don’t have (mental toughness),” Bryant opines. “I’ve seen young guys come through who don’t have it, but I think that’s what allows guys to play at this position for a long period of time — that mental aspect.”
Which brought to mind a story from his beginnings as a New York Giant.
“During training camp I’d run by (Michael) Strahan. He’s there sweating his butt off going through defensive line drills and he used to say, ‘It’s always a great day to be a kicker — except on Sundays.’
“Some of these guys understand that aspect of the game.”
Bryant’s Big Book of Big Kicks is filled with evidence of his toughness upstairs:
Most pertinent to today’s playoff game against Seattle, there was his game-winner from 49 yards against the Seahawks in the 2012 divisional playoff. “On the bigger picture of things it would be at the top (of his all-time list) just because it was a big kick in a very meaningful game,” he said.
When with Tampa Bay, his 62-yarder beat Philadelphia in 2006, the second-longest game-winner in NFL history.
In the ultimate display of competitive fortitude, just days after his infant son died in his sleep in 2008, he kicked three field goals to help Tampa Bay beat Green Bay.
As to how much he weighed not playing that day, Bryant said, “The question was there. But at the end of the day I was always raised to do your best. It was something I would have taught (son Tryson). It’s something I teach my kids now — despite the situation to go out and do my best. And I was able to recognize him for the day.”
And there was this thought, too, not something that someone going through such personal pain might normally consider: If the team had to bring in another kicker, it would have to cut someone else on the roster to make room. “I didn’t want to do that to somebody as well,” Bryant said.
And there was this season, Bryant’s most satisfying by almost any measure. He fought off training-camp competition amid heightened suspicion that at 41 and coming off a quad injury last year he was on his last leg. He made 34 of 37 attempts (identical to the numbers for Seattle’s Steven Hauschka). He proved the range is still there, making 6 of 8 from 50 yards and longer, including a 59-yarder against Kansas City. And the guy who has kicked in any league that had a working set of uprights finally made All Pro.
He’s been an Iowa Barnstormer (arena football) and a Frankfurt Galaxy (NFL Europe). A Florida Tusker (United Football League). And in between, there were visits to five NFL stops — the longest previous being Tampa Bay before being unceremoniously released following the 2008 season.
He battled a relentless foe even before going pro: A ticking clock. Knowing the uncertain, itinerant nature of kicking, Bryant gave himself four years after leaving Baylor to break in. While waiting, he lived at home and took a gig working at a pawn shop. Someone finally claimed him nearly four years later when the Giants gave him a look and he eased into the kicking pipeline.
By the time the Falcons brought him in to tryout in December 2009 to replace a struggling Jason Elam, Bryant was an old hand at the pressures of making a good first impression. He nailed his audition — “I had a great workout, 18 kicks. I think the only one I missed was 58 (yards) from the right hash,” he said.
And seven years later, he remarkably finds himself with the same team, discovering a measure of permanence in a career that seemed destined to be windblown.
Not so you’d know it to hear him talk. “I’ve always taken the mindset going back to my rookie year: Do good today so they let you come back tomorrow. There is a sense of stability (with the Falcons), but I don’t allow myself to feel that,” he said.
When as a kicker, you have your New Age head coach talking about how high your grade is on his CT (Competitive Toughness) scale, you just might be tough enough.
Keith Armstrong knows that. When your position coach is asked about what separates you from the faceless pool of those who would kick for a living and answers, “The thing that is really rare with him is he’s a tough guy” — that’s a good sign.
Toughness is a fine trait any time, but particularly at playoff time, when the oxygen tends to be sucked from the stadium at the end of the close ones.
The luxury of having a kicker whose head is bolted tightly to his shoulders when it might be time to author a game-winner is nothing to be taken lightly.
So said the one coach who can make kicking a field goal sound like storming Omaha Beach.
“It’s everything knowing that when we have our opportunity and it’s in the right spot for us to go, we’re going to let it rip and attack,” Quinn said. “There is zero hesitation from a coaching standpoint, knowing what Matt is capable of.”
Of all the football players on the field today, Bryant may be among the very few givens.