The high-pressure, tumultuous life of NFL kickers

	Adam Vinatieri injured his left foot during preseason workouts, but should be fine to start the season for the Colts. Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images

There are few certainties attendant to this week's opening of the NFL season. But here's one: Kickers will win games, break hearts and control the fortunes of the autumn in a manner that is grossly disproportionate to their playing time or their size.

Think of this as the discomfort we all live with. Football is far and away the most popular spectator sport in the United States for dozens of reasons. One of these reasons is not that almost one in four games is decided by a field goal or less (and thus, in many cases, by a field goal kicker). The actual statistic is this: In 2005, 23.4 percent of all NFL games were decided by three points or less, a figure that rose for 20 years and has remained fairly steady for the last decade.

It is an incontrovertible football fact: Field goals decide games, and thus kickers live in a strange world of isolation and pressure from week to week. Consider the attention paid this month to the injuries suffered by -- and the importance attached to -- Adam Vinatieri and Mike Vanderjagt.

During my August tour of NFL training camps, I made a point of talking with kickers at every stop, trying to get a glimpse into their unique world. Sobering reality: One of the guys I talked to was Billy Cundiff, who at the time was the front-runner to be kicking for the Packers this fall, but will not be (keep reading).

I was talking to Cundiff about pressure and he explained to me that pressure can last far beyond Sunday. Cundiff spent the last four seasons in Dallas, the last two performing under the withering gaze of Bill Parcells.

"Every day I was under the watchful eye,'' says Cundiff. "And every day is a test. Once we were on the road for an exhibition game in Oakland and I got on the hotel elevator. Coach Parcells gets on right after me. Just the two of us in there and he doesn't say a thing. Doesn't look at me, doesn't acknowledge me in any way. But then if the team was going well and I was kicking well, he'd tell me all these great stories about these kickers he liked, like Matt Bahr. And I've got much thicker skin than before I played for him.

"The whole thing is about performance,'' says Cundiff. "With my teammates, if they feel like they can trust you on Sunday, you're their boy. If they can't you're not. Simple as that.''