Sandomir is the co-editor of the new book, The Final Four Of Everything, which uses college brackets to debate shit in history, pop culture, and what not. No hot chick bracket, though. Which I find odd, given that 95% of all online mock brackets are "Who would you do?" brackets. But I guess the Times is just too classy for that sort of thing. Or perhaps too gay. Perhaps both.

The book features bracket contributions from me, Sandomir, Fatsis, Leitch, and a host of others. I did Cereals, with Crunch Berries winning. My wife thinks I'm an asshole for not having Cinnamon Toast Crunch win. WELL, WRITE YOUR OWN BRACKET, MISSY. Leitch did 21st Century Sports Books, with Moneyball winning. And Fatsis did a handful of brackets, including Acronyms, with AIDS winning. YAY, AIDS!

I had a serious issue with some of the brackets in this book that I bring up with Sandomir, including a Seductive Foreign Accent bracket where the fucking Canadian accent made the finals. A fucking Canadian accent? Are you kidding? Who the fuck has a Canadian accent fetish? (Sorry. Spud.) I also take issue with the Comedy Routines bracket penned by Bill Scheft. Know what Scheft said was the best Comedy Routine of all time? Jeff Foxworthy's "You might be a redneck" routine. Foxworthy beat out Sam Kinison, Chris Rock, and Richard Pryor for the "honor". Seriously, fuck Bill Scheft.

We also talk about license plates, Phylicia Rashad's MILFiness, national anthem replacements, and more. Sandomir also confesses to being an "amateur celebrity impressionist". A man of many hats, that Sandomir.

This week's podcast is available for your listening pleasure right here. You can also find the new Deadcast in the iTunes Music Store here. Special thanks to Liberated Syndication for hosting us. Got an email for me or next week's guest (Matt Vasgersian) you want read over the air? Send it to me here. Now sit back, relax, and quickly come to the conclusion that Fatsis is a far better radio host than I am.

Today: The Denver Broncos. Your author is Stefan Fatsis

Stefan Fatsis is the author of A Few Seconds of Panic, which chronicles his summer as a short, weak, old placekicker with the Denver Broncos in 2006.

His words are after the jump.

I talked to Jake Plummer the other day. He called to say thanks for sending him a signed copy of my book, in which he plays Shut the Box, rips Mike Shanahan (on page 316; Broncos executives refer to it as Stefan 3:16) and generally demonstrates that he is a funny, caring, admirable, exceptionally grounded badass. Jake said he plans to read it during an upcoming trip to Machu Picchu and the Galapagos Islands—along with the memoir by his late pal Pat Tillman’s mom, Boots on the Ground by Dusk. If I can’t afford to visit the Galapagos, at least my book will.

Jake’s been having what he’d call a “sweet” time since voluntarily ditching the NFL and moving home to Idaho after the 2006 season. He’s got married (to a former Broncos cheerleader), toured Thailand, played some handball, hit a bluegrass festival, backpacked and camped, even cruised around in a motor home. No regrets, except for how it ended it Denver, when Shanahan benched him for then-rookie Jay Cutler despite a 7-4 record and an easy road to the playoffs. “I miss the competition and I miss rolling to my left and throwing the ball into the gap,” Jake said. “But I don’t miss the other bullshit.”

Ah, but the NFL is mostly other bullshit, at least for those paid to play the game. I know, Drew, fans don’t want to see players as flesh-and-blood people suffering the same workplace indignities and living the same lives of quiet desperation as the rest of us. Fans need to hate, and you can’t hate a guy if you learn that he’s a faithful husband who has roses delivered to his wife every Monday during the season (when he can’t get out of bed because his body feels like it’s been run through a trash compactor), a loving father who invents fantastical bedtime stories for his kids (before the combination of Vioxx and Ambien renders him unconscious) and a progressive thinker who agrees with everything Paul Krugman says (but plans to vote for McCain anyway because he wants to pay fewer taxes). I made up all of those examples.

So, yes, sorry to spoil the fun, but players are people, too. And that’s why it’s impossible to know how the Broncos or anyone else will do this season. It depends on whether an offensive lineman has a hammy, on whether some anonymous running back gains 1,300 yards, on whether a wide receiver has lady trouble, on how the guys in the differently colored jerseys play on Sunday. This prediction sounds pretty authoritative—except that Travis Henry was cut two months ago. Oops! FanNation has some astute analysis: “The Broncos are good.” These experts say Denver will go 9-7. No, 6-10. No, 8-8. You want real numbers? Buy this book, along with mine, of course.

Here’s what I envision for the 2008 Denver Broncos:

It’ll be a breakout year for my buddy tight end Nate Jackson.

On the field? Sure, whatever. But definitely in the creative world. Nate’s already a good writer, and he makes music under the name Jack Nasty, which he swears doesn’t refer to this. Because newspapers have little idea what’s happening on the field during training camp but still have to fill the traditional quota of one news story, one notes column and one profile a day, Nate’s hip-hop stylings earned a profile in the Denver Post this month. The two reporters assigned to the piece—one to write, one to play the fool on a Web video—compared Nate’s music to that of Eminem and Vanilla Ice. Because, you know, they’re white, too!

Obligatory football content: Nate has run with the first unit a lot this summer and should see the most passes of his six-year career. But cuddly, third-year Tony Scheffler should continue developing into an NFL beast. (I kid, Tony; you’re not that cuddly.)

Having diabetes will humanize Jay Cutler.

Eh, no it won’t. Cutler remains aloof with the media, with many of his teammates and with other humans as well. And his father still attends every practice! One day during my time in Denver, I asked the dad a few basic questions about his boy’s background. He looked at me with shock and scorn. ``You haven’t read any of the magazine stories, have you?’’ he said. Really, he did. I wrote it down.

Some additional comments, heretofore unpublished, from my sideline interview with Jay Cutler’s father:

“He was making throws at 10 years old that other kids couldn’t.”

“He picks things up fast. It’s evident here. Contrary to what Sal Paolantonio and others said early on. Where they get their information is beyond me.’’

“Guys like Kiper and Clayton and them, to this day they still can’t get past a quarterback being drafted as high as he was with the record he had. They don’t know talent.”

Obligatory football content: I admit, grudgingly, that Jay Cutler is a good quarterback. I hope he’s playing in Jacksonville soon.

Matt Prater will make some field goals. He’ll also miss some field goals.

When the kid misses them, message boards will flood with comments about how the Broncos never should have let Jason Elam, a 15-year career Bronco (and future Hall of Famer—along with Matt Stover; suck, it Drew), leave as a free agent. When, as he did in practice a few weeks ago, Prater makes a 68-yarder, they will hail Mike Shanahan for letting the over-the-hill Elam hit the road.

Earlier this month, visiting training camp to flog my book, I had lunch with Prater and two baby-faced punters who will remind no one of my ephedra-taking, Saved by the Bell-watching, cabbie-slapping training-camp foil, Todd Sauerbrun, whom I weirdly miss. They all seem like very nice young fellows.

Obligatory football content: Matt Prater has a compact leg swing.

The Broncos will have a leadership vacuum.

Reporters love to write about “intangibles” like leadership, though they can’t define what it means in the context of a locker room because much of what makes a leader is hidden from public view. Plummer was a terrific leader, which in his case involved everything from being the screaming guy whose outstretched palm you slap on the way down the tunnel to passionately lecturing a rookie, as he did in the weight room one day, about the hypocrisy of players who publicly praise God and privately chase women not their wives.

This year’s Broncos don’t have many veterans who have been with the team very long, or players whose talent and personality command instant respect. Champ Bailey is pretty quiet. Dre’ Bly isn’t, but he seems to be more of a joker than a leader. Brandon Marshall is a stud on the field but has been spending a lot of time off the field talking things over with his defense lawyer. The running backs are, as usual, a mystery. And no one will confuse Cutler with Pericles. Does it matter? A surfeit of talent can compensate for a lack of leadership. The Broncos probably don’t possess such a surfeit right now.

Shanahan has whacked about 80 percent of the players I showered with in 2006, including that team’s three bona fide leaders: Plummer, linebacker Al Wilson and safety John Lynch. (Rod Smith, who retired tearfully a few weeks ago, was mostly hurt when I was in camp.) All three were beloved by teammates, and each of their forced departures was as cold as a contract killing. Plummer was benched—wrongly, I maintain—despite amassing a 40-18 record as a starter and taking the Broncos to the brink of a Super Bowl, and then traded even though he told the team he was retiring (which cost him $3.5 million). Wilson was cut after a potentially career-ending spinal injury that resulted in a nasty grievance against the team. Lynch was released amid behind-the-scenes contractual bitterness.

Yeah, football’s a nasty business. But the departures of Plummer, Lynch, Wilson and Smith mean the following players have been Broncos the longest: center Tom Nalen (just had knee surgery; friendlier than he’d ever admit but not a rah-rah guy), guard Ben Hamilton (back after a bunch of concussions; total softy) and long snapper Mike Leach. Leach is a William & Mary grad whom Peter King last year crowned the 1,000th-best player in the NFL. (Leach had lobbied to be last.) Mike Leach has the third-longest tenure on the Broncos. “Scary, huh?” he said to me.

Obligatory football content: Leach’s snaps on placekicks make exactly three and a half revolutions.

Mike Shanahan will tell the media that if the players “do the little things right” they’ll “have a chance to do something special.”

Think what you will about Mike Shanahan, the man knows to handle the media: Say little, divulge less. Sure, people mock his tan and his teeth, but he’s not a terrible guy—just, as one Bronco told me, a guy with a lot of power. And the past two years he’s wielded that power as indiscriminately as at any time in his career, firing his extremely smart and able GM, Ted Sundquist, along with a passel of coaches. Every Broncos team is Shanahan’s team, but this one might as well replace the snorting horse on the helmet with a snorting Shanny. And if it fails? Save the SHANNY-MUST-GO DAMMIT!!!! posts, Broncos fans. Mike Shanahan is your head coach until his contract expires in 2011, and possibly longer.

Obligatory football content: None. Coaches don’t play football.

Author of "Word Freak" and renowned short person Stefan Fatsis, who I've had the pleasure to meet on a few occasions and was once beaten at Scrabble by Big Daddy Balls Magary (Drew never shuts up about this), is coming out with a book this summer about his experiences joining the Denver Broncos camp in 2006 as a kicker. One of Fatsis' MSM homes, the Wall Street Journal, had an excerpt from "A Few Seconds of Panic" yesterday, and it's a fine read.

Then Shanahan motions the team to the middle of the field. "In this business," he says, "there's a lot of pressure, and a lot of pressure put on kickers. We're going to put some pressure on our kicker, Stefan. He's going to kick. If he makes it, meetings will end at 9:00 instead of 9:30."

Now I don't want to give you any SPOILERS! of how it's going to turn out, but...

Amid a pulsing dance beat, I do a perp walk through the locker room. The reviews are not good. Linebacker Keith Burns: "I was thoroughly disgusted." Center Tom Nalen: "Thanks for f—-ing us." Tight end Chad Mustard: "S—- the bed! Call housecleaning! We need new sheets!" Quarterback Jake Plummer: "Don't ... come near me. Get out of here."

Sorry Stefan. If it's any consolation, Jake Plummer has all sorts of time to talk to you now.

Today's entry comes from Stefan Fatsis, who became an actual member of the Denver Broncos-well, a placekicker-to write his new book, A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-foot-8, 170-pound, 43-year-old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL, which will be released next month. A decade earlier, on assignment for The Wall Street Journal, he got a tour of the Oakland Athletics' weight room.

In the short story that follows, no athlete will overdose in front of me. The main characters took their medicine in private.

With just a few weeks left in the 1996 regular season, I pitched a story about what I brilliantly deduced was the overlooked reason for the record number of home runs soaring beyond big-league fences that year: weightlifting. Players for decades had eschewed weights because of an institutional conviction that big muscles hindered flexibility; "Built like Tarzan, throw like Jane," the baseball man's cliché went. Now, however, the newly bulked were mashing the ball. Sweetheart, get me copy!

My 1,691-word article led with an anecdote about a boyish Athletics leftfielder named Jason Giambi. Under the watchful eye of one Mark McGwire-who was wrapping up the first of four straight 50-plus-homer seasons-young Jason had added 25 pounds since reaching the majors a year earlier. Giambi had never hit more than 12 dingers in a season in the minors. In his first full season in the bigs, he had 20. "I attribute the year I'm having to the weightlifting," he told me.

I happened to show up at the Oakland Coliseum on Jason Giambi Growth Chart Day. Kids got a life-size poster of the budding star to measure their progress growing up. I joked that the chart didn't measure how much "Mr. Giambi" per Journal style was growing out. The piece got worse from there. It's filled with quotes and details that make me look, in hindsight, like a complete idiot. After citing the contemporaneous conventional wisdom about the homer explosion-smaller ballparks, juiced ball, lousy pitching, etc.-I opined in the nut graph that "the missing component may be as obvious as Mr. Giambi's biceps: Baseball players are pumped up and worked out as never before."

Yup, the weights-and the "protein-enriched shakes"-must have been why Brady Anderson had smacked 46 homers so far and Todd Hundley had 41. I noted that McGwire, asked once to explain his home-run prowess, had cited bad pitching "and this"-his forearms. I did note a downside to the weight mania, however. All that lifting may have been why Jose Canseco repeatedly landed on the DL, why Juan Gonzalez suffered recurring back problems, why Dean Palmer ruptured a biceps tendon while swinging a bat.

Anyway, the locker room. Right after the game against the Baltimore Orioles, the Athletics filed into their small weight room. My chaperone was Bob Alejo, the team's strength coach. Alejo, I recall, was well-built himself, the way some trainers are, and he had a swagger common among people who spend a lot of time with athletes and often confuse the players' abilities with their own. We stood in front of a rack of dumbbells. McGwire-"who says he might open a bodybuilding gym after he retires," I wrote-worked on legs and shoulder and talked real estate with B.J. Surhoff. Cal Ripken Jr. sprinted on a treadmill and did biceps curls. Giambi bench-pressed 185 pounds.

Alejo volunteered a piece of advice:

"You might want to back away from there," he said.

"From where?" I replied, genuinely confused.

"From the weight rack. You don't want to get hurt."



I don't want to get hurt? How exactly would that happen? Would I injure myself in a foolhardy attempt to use these, what did you call them? Dumb-bells? Would a 55-pound weight leap off the rack and knock me unconscious? Would I dissolve into a pile of sawdust if my elbow brushed against the heavy metals that these finely calibrated professional athletes employ to sculpt their mighty physiques? Or, seeing these big, hard bodies lifting all these heavy, heavy objects, would I swoon like Scarlett O'Hara and impale myself on a particularly pointy corner of the rack? I do declare! Such manly men! Fetch me a fan and a glass of iced tea!

Predictably, I didn't respond. If a smirk and a chuckle passed my lips, I don't remember; probably not. I didn't tell Alejo that regular people also lifted weights. Or that I had spent the past three months maniacally rehabbing an ACL torn playing a sport that actually involves contact. I took a couple of steps away from the weights and continued asking the wrong questions, just like everyone else who covered baseball in the 1990s-until, that is, Steve Wilstein changed the conversation forever.

A decade later, as McGwire dissembled in front of Congress and Giambi made his non-admission admission and George Mitchell issued his Report, I thought fondly of the life-saving safety tip I'd received in Oakland. Finally, the rest of my fellow weakling reporters were in on the secret. We all knew as much about "weightlifting" as the strength coach of the team I described as "baseball's most dedicated lifters."

It wasn't a kicker-centric Super Bowl, the way I'd hoped it would be, the way I hope every Super Bowl will be. (My favorites: V, XXV, XXXVI and XXXVIII.) But I've crafted a kicker-related theory that I consider as solid as Tom Dempsey's right shoe.

The downfall of the Patriots was about performance, of course, the way all sporting contests are—in this case that of the Giants' defensive line and of young Elijah, who will ascend to heaven in a chariot of fire adorned with a lowercase ny and driven by four guys from Yonkers. But for all of New England's season-long protestations of humility and respect, it was hubris that did them in—Bill Belichick's hubris. It showed up at the game's end, when he couldn't muster the class or grace to stay on the field while Eli took a knee.

But, more critical to the final score, it showed up when he refused to kick.

The writers, dead-tree and not, mentioned it, as they should have. But they didn't deconstruct its significance. With 6:49 left in the third quarter, Belichick kept Brady on the field on fourth and 13 from the Giants' 31 instead of having placekicker Stephen Gostkowski try a 49-yard field goal. Here's what should have been running through Captain Sominex's head: We're ahead 7-3. There are less than 22 minutes to play in a Super Bowl in which points have been scarce. If that little shit can kick the ball between the uprights, we're ahead 10-3. Leading by four means that the Jets or Giants or whomever the hell we're playing need to score once to take the lead. Leading by seven means they need to score twice. Scoring twice is harder than scoring once.

Yes, New England was better than any team this season at converting on fourth down. The league average was just under 50 percent; the Patriots did it 15 of 21 times, or 71 percent. Give the curmudgeon credit: Belichick understands that, as Gregg Easterbrook has worn out keyboards explaining, NFL teams should go for it on fourth down more than they do. But that means fourth and 4 from their own 40 or even fourth and 7 from the opposing 30—and only when a field goal wouldn't be decisive. Fourth and 13? I asked Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders for some stats. They'd be meaningless, he replied. Teams only go for it on fourth and 10 or more when losing near the end of a game. The Patriots were winning in the third quarter.

In a postgame news conference that made The Sorrow and the Pity look like American Pie, here was Belichick's typically dismissive response when some ignoramus dared posit that he could have tried a field goal: "Yeah, but it was a 50-yard field goal." So bleeping what? Before a game, a coach asks his kicker for his outer range for the day. I'm willing to bet my Copas that, under a dome, in the Arizona altitude, in the Super Bowl, Stephen Gostkowski didn't reply, "Forty-eight—and not an inch more, coach."

True, the kid has kicked just one field goal of 50-plus yards in his two years in the NFL, and it was last season. It's also true that Gostkowski's longest FG this year was from 45. But that doesn't mean he can't kick a football 49 yards. Every NFL kicker can. The Giants' weaker-legged Lawrence Tynes's 47-yard game-winner in polar Green Bay was probably good from 57.

Rather, Gostkowski's lack of 50-plus stats reflects two things: One, the Patriots didn't attempt many field goals this season (24) because they scored a lot of touchdowns (75) instead. Two, he probably wound up kicking shorter field goals because Belichick's aggressiveness on fourth down moved the ball closer.

Did Gostkowski injure himself shanking that second-quarter kickoff out of bounds? I have no idea, but I doubt it; he later booted one to the Giants' 3-yard line. Anyway, if the kicker or a lack of confidence in the kicker really was the problem, Belichick could have punted, making the Giants—who had managed a single field goal to that point—travel anywhere from 11 to 30 yards farther in order to score.

No, I think Belichick arrogantly assumed that the highest-scoring offense in NFL history would revert to form against a defense it had abused five weeks earlier. In that, he refused to cop to what 100 million people were witnessing: his team getting beat. Instead of taking the three points—or the 60 or so percent likelihood that Gostkowski would deliver the three points—Belichick let his quarterback airmail one into the end zone. The Giants didn't score on the subsequent drive. But they did wind up winning by three.

Look, I'm a kicker. I love kickers. For Pete Gogolak's
sake, I did a modern Plimpton as a kicker and I will talk about kicking whenever possible. But Belichick's no-kick wasn't just an insult to my kind. It's was a mind-bogglingly ill-considered football decision. For it alone, the Patriots deserved to lose. Mess with the kicker, mess with history.

Stefan Fatsis is the author of Word Freak and a longtime sports reporter for the Wall Street Journal and sports commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered." His new book, A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-year-old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL, about his summer as a training-camp kicker for the Denver Broncos, comes out in July.

When Denver wideout Javon Walker caught the ball and fell to the ground at Buffalo's 24-yard line with the clock ticking to nothing, one word went screaming through my cerebral cortex: Geronimo!

That's the term for a last-second, no-timeouts, no-way-to-stop-the-clock field goal that I learned when I kicked with the Broncos last summer. It's a fairly straightforward procedure. When the seconds are evaporating, the special-teams coaches shout something along the lines of "Get ready Geronimo!'' to alert the 11 members of the field-goal protection unit, or FG Pro, they might be needed. When it's time to move, the coaches and then the players subbing into the game from the bench "sprint on the field yelling 'Geranamo'!!" as my playbook put it. Correcting my special-teams coach's spelling might have been my biggest contribution to the franchise.

My coach moved over to the defensive backs this season, and Mike Shanahan hired a new special-teams boss who, as NFL coaches do, changed the terminology. This year's call is "Toro!'' to get ready and "Rally!'' to set the play in motion. Not that players ever expect to perform it. During my three months as a paper Bronco, we formally practiced emergency kicks one day and fake-field-goal tomfoolery one day. I asked Jason Elam the last time the team had called a fake. "The Nixon administration,'' he said. Naturally, Elam ran the first fake of his career last December. (And pulled a hamstring doing it, adding another tale to the legend of the dork kicker; Elam's actually a terrific all-round athlete.) Then, yesterday, he ran the nearly-as-rare last-second fire drill.

I wasn't at the game in Orchard Park, but I did watch it live via a heaven-sent (well, China-sent), illegal transmission on my computer. Afterward, like a teenage Bill Belichick studying tape of Navy games or a Kennedy-assassination wackjob deconstructing the Zapruder film, I paused and played and paused and played the NFL.com highlights of the final seconds about 30 times. If you thought the play was incredible in real time, it's even more remarkable broken down.

When we practiced Geronimo during training camp, Elam told me a team needs 16 seconds from the spot of the ball by the referee to run the play — time for FG Pro to run onto the field, get set and snap the ball. Sixteen seconds, he said, should be plenty. "The biggest thing is don't rush it,'' Jason advised. "Everybody's screaming and yelling, there's a lot of chaos going on. But we've got ten seconds, nine, eight. You've got plenty of time.''

"Six, five, four,'' I said, taking my steps back.

"It doesn't have to be snapped until zero,'' Jason said. "I'm usually ready by the time the refs are ready.''

The Broncos didn't have nearly as much time yesterday. Trailing 14-12, 'Bama-banged second-year quarterback Jay Cutler had marched the team to Buffalo's 35-yard line. With no timeouts, Cutler scrambled for no gain as the clock ticked toward 20 seconds. At that point, the Broncos could have spiked the ball and thrown one more ball toward the sidelines, or had Elam attempt a 53-yard field goal. While I know Jason Elam, and Jason Elam is a friend of mine, I also recognize that he's 37 years old and already had missed twice from shorter distances. So Cutler took the snap at 0:18 and hit Javon Walker on a two-step slant in toward the middle of the field. Walker fell to the ground at the 24 yard line at 0:15. First down. The ref grabbed the ball at 0:11. No way, I thought, can they pull it off.

The Broncos apparently intended to have Cutler spike the ball and allow Elam to trot on casually for the pressure kick. But the signals got crossed and the cry of "Toro!'' sent the FG Pro unit rushing on and the offense sprinting off. On the tape, with five seconds left, Javon Walker is the last Bronco exiting the field, but everyone on the field-goal team is, remarkably, in position — everyone except for the holder, punter Todd Sauerbrun.

Elam had in effect fired Sauerbrun from the job in 2005 in favor of starting quarterback Jake Plummer, beloved by Elam for his quick hands and consistent ball placement. Those traits are critically reassuring for kickers, especially for 15-year veterans who call the shots about how they want to perform their jobs. But Plummer is gone and the new special-teams coach, Scott O'Brien, gave the job to Sauerbrun, with whom he had worked in Carolina. Whether Sauerbrun's holds had anything to do with Elam's earlier misses I have no idea, but on this crucial play, for whatever reason, Sauerbrun is late.

Elam already has his right foot on the "spot'' he wants Sauerbrun to place the nose of the ball, eight and a quarter yards behind the line of scrimmage. The clock now reads :04, and it's still not clear they'll have time. Elam has to retreat into place; the line has to stay still; long-snapper Mike Leach has to make eye contact through his legs with Sauerbrun; everyone has to block out the deafening crowd; Elam has to signal Sauerbrun to start the play; Leach has to release the ball.

Elam abandons his usual three-steps-back-and-two-steps-over routine and takes the hypotenuse, backpedaling four steps on a diagonal. He's in place at :03. The clock flips to :02 just as Leach fires the ball, officially starting the play, which, from snap to kick typically takes 1.25 seconds, enough time to get the ball up before the defense can penetrate and block it. Sauerbrun places the nose of the ball down at :01, and it's still there when Elam's right foot strikes the ball. The clock turns to 0:00 as the ball flies over the line en route to the goalposts 42 yards away. Leach — a terrific guy and accomplished specialist who was just named the 1,000th-best player in the NFL, haha, by SI's Peter King — rises and blocks a couple of Bills, then bursts through the line and sprints with arms raised to retrieve the ball, the epitome of the selfless snapper. Elam runs the other way with index finger aloft and is tackled by one of my buddies, tight end Nate Jackson. A classic sports dogpile ensues.

Kicking a field goal during an NFL practice is the most unnerving thing I've done in my life . It is the rare play when the clock is (almost always) stopped, and the game's full focus shifts to an individual. It's also the yang to the kicker's normal yin life. Elam one day described his job, inspiring my book title, as "hours and hours of boredom surrounded by a few seconds of panic.'' He'd know as well as anyone. According to our friends at Football Outsiders, Elam since 1996 has nailed 12 of 14 field goals in the final minute of regulation or in overtime to tie or win a game. That's a more clutch percentage than his friend Adam Vinatieri, who's earned his rep partly because he's had a lot of chances, going 20 for 25 in that same period. As a sort-of kicker, I'm obviously biased. I think both dudes should be in Canton some day.

And what Elam (and his special-teams mates) pulled off yesterday should be a shiny border on his application. He executed to perfection one of the most chaotic plays in a sport defined by chaos. And did it with two seconds to spare.