Vikings’ Forbath hoping to boot playoff infamy
Minnesota has been dogged by postseason misses.
MINNEAPOLIS — Mike Zimmer has tools in his Winter Park office to thwart the ghosts of Vikings’ playoff past — a “crystal ball” and a “wood spirit” gifted by good Samaritans.
He makes nothing of a so-called Vikings “curse,” but if there is one, it has rested on the foot of kickers.
Kai Forbath wears designer shoe brands like Saint Laurent and Davinci by day. But when he puts on his Nike cleats before today’s NFC divisional round playoff against the Saints, he’ll do so with little thought toward the superstitions and blown kicks that vex Vikings fans.
“If I trust my swing and watch my foot hit the ball,” Forbath said, “typically good things happen.”
That’s the best-case scenario for the Vikings’ championship hopes.
A pair of infamous kicks will have fans fighting visions of wide-left attempts from All-Pros Gary Anderson (against the Falcons) and Blair Walsh (former Geor- gia Bulldog) in the 1998 and 2015 playoffs, respectively. But within the organization, there is less fretting.
Coaches and teammates are confident in Forbath because of his consistent leg a nd an even-keeled demeanor befitting a 30-yearold who grew up surfing on southern California beaches between Santa Monica and Malibu.
“Unlike a lot of specialists, if something goes wrong, he doesn't freak out," spe-cial teams coordinator Mike Priefer said. "He doesn't lose his mind. He doesn't lose his composure. He learns from whatever mistake he might have made on that particular kick or kickoff or whatever it is. He comes back stron-ger than ever."
Still, there is a wait-and-see mode that follows For-bath and the kicking opera-tion that ranked 18th in the NFL in field-goal percent-age, is 31st in extra-point per-centage and is still settling in with a new long snapper, Jeff Overbaugh, who signed Dec. 26. Beating the Saints would be redemption of sorts.
A day after his 29th birth-day last year, Forbath was at the airport readying to board a flight back to New Orleans where hehad just beaten Con-nor Barth for the job as Saints kicker. His phone rang. Saints coach Sean Payton decided to reverse course on Sept. 6, 2016, signing undrafted rookie Wil Lutz and cutting Forbath just a few days after giving him the job.
The Vikings came calling two months later. Now both kickers will take the field today. Forbath has epito-mized sportsmanship with his public comments, down- playing the significance of the matchup.
But he felt pretty good against another former team on Nov. 12, when he drilled a 53-yard field goal and made all five extra points in Wash-ington during the Vikings' 38-30 win. About two years ago, Forbath had found out on Twitter he was being cut by the Redskins in Septem-ber 2015.
"Especially being able to kick a long one when a lot of the media and whatnot used to claim me as somebody who didn't have a strong leg," Forbath said. "You get to go in there and hit a long one, it kind of felt nice."
Forbath is the eighth-most accurate kicker in NFL history with a career 85.9 percent success rate on field goals (84.2 percent this season). That alone is enough reason to give the Vikings the assurance they need, but he lacks something held by nearly everybody around him on the all-time list — playoff experience.
In his lone playoff appearance for Washington in 2013, Forbath made two extra points but didn’t attempt a field goal.
He’s already made big kicks for the 13-win Vikings, including a winning field goal in Chicago, six field goals in a win against the Ravens and the long one in Washington to give the Vikings an 11-point lead.
Perhaps no kick was trumpeted more by Priefer to his group than the 49-yarder in Green Bay, where frigid winds meant challenging conditions.
The kick boosted confidence in a Vikings operation that missed nine kicks (two blocked) heading into the postseason.
“It’s a football game for me,” Forbath said. “Same kicks. Kicks aren’t worth more or less just because it’s the playoffs.”
Entering today, the Vikings are comfortable with Forbath’s field-goal range in the “low-to-mid 50s,” according to Priefer.
“Any type of kick now going forward is a pressure kick. It’s a big kick you need to have the team’s trust,” Priefer said. “Right now, I think they trust him — I know they trust him because I think he ended up making 32 field goals for us and most of them were huge.”