The snap. The hold. The kick.
Blink and you may have missed the moving parts of an NFL play so routine, so rote, so seemingly mechanical that when it comes, most viewers flip the channel or run to the bathroom in anticipation of both the trueness of the kick and the commercial break that's sure to follow. And yet, on any given Sunday that routine play, that commonplace kick, can prove so vital to the outcome of a game. Pump up the crowd noise and turn that NFL game into a playoff matchup, maybe even a Super Bowl bout, a fight for the Lombardi Trophy that with less than a minute left on the clock still hangs in the balance, and suddenly the play doesn't seem so routine, the players acting out these mindless duties suddenly so much more real, more human.
But for most NFL fans, casual or fanatical, the elements of such a play, the players going through those same mechanical motions they've gone through innumerable times before, remain invisible. Even if all goes to plan and the kick's trajectory indeed proves true, there's little fanfare, few accolades.
But should things go wrong...
For Brian Kinchen, a 14-year NFL veteran who spent three years away from the game only to find himself thrust unexpectedly into the middle of the New England Patriots' 2003 Super Bowl run, the Adam Vinatieri kick that defeated the Carolina Panthers, that year was anything but routine. A hand injury, the rust of seasons away, the pressure of a city and a nation watching - despite it all, Kinchen got the job done.
But for Kinchen, one of the "invisible heroes" of Super Bowl XXXVIII, it almost never was.
***
"When I got out there, my only thought was to just rip it as hard as I could throw it," Kinchen said. "Just like I always did."
Kinchen and the Patriots made their way through an up-and-down AFC playoff field that year, including a nail-biter against the Tennessee Titans that very well could have gone the other way had Titans receiver Drew Bennett hauled in a late Steven McNair pass, and a game against now-Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning and his former team, the Indianapolis Colts, wherein Manning, well on his way to becoming one of the best quarterbacks in the league, had one of his worst days as an NFL player, tossing four interceptions and looking ultimately out of sorts.
Through it all, Kinchen had a kind of belief, almost a certainty - though not quite - that the Pats would come out on top. But when the Super Bowl came, against his former team no less, and the game, a back-and-forth affair, began to wind down with neither team able to separate from the other, Kinchen began to pace.
And when Panthers receiver Muhsin Muhammad caught a touchdown pass that put the Patriots down by one with less than seven minutes left, Kinchen began to pray.
"I never prayed to God for anything as far as on-the-field success," Kinchen said. "I always prayed for my best, prayed for my team to do our best, but I never worried about outcomes. But I literally, for the first time prayed to God that we would score a touchdown."
He'd already made mistakes - he muffed the second punt snap and the last extra point of the first half - and Belichick had, unsurprisingly, taken notice.
"I run off the field after that extra point, and I can see Belichick coming down the boundary at me. So, I start running like as far away as I can hoping he's going to give up and he keeps coming." The first half was nearly over, only a few seconds left on the clock after a sudden barrage of points had left the score 14-10 in New England's favor. "So I'm thinking Bill's distracted, he ain't gonna make it down here. He comes all the way down there and - I always talk about the 'genius' of Bill Belichick, because in that moment the two things he says to me were the most obvious things anyone could say.
"He said; 'Brian, we're in a Super Bowl here. And you're not doing your job, the job we hired you to do.'"
Not only was Kinchen subject to Belichick's death-grip mind meld, he was also dealing with a freak injury - a deep cut to his hand and finger, suffered during the pre-game meal while trying to halve his dinner roll with a steak knife. Fortunately, Kinchen always wore gloves while snapping, but it was just another strange thing to overcome in an ever-lengthening list of oddities and frustrations.
But if Brady and company could drive down the field and score a touchdown, potentially putting the Pats up by five, at which point the smart money says to go for two, Kinchen could escape, whatever the outcome would be, unscathed.
Kinchen's prayers were answered, doubly so when Pats running back Kevin Faulk converted the two-point conversion.
But the elation was short-lived.
Jake Delhomme and the Panthers drove down the field for their own score, tying the game at 29 on a Delhomme post route to Ricky Proehl, and that inescapable sense that it would come down to a field goal, a Vinatieri kick, a Brian Kinchen snap, began to fill him.
"I was bringing balls home to my hotel room, snapping them into a pillow on the door," Kinchen said of the week leading up to the game. "I mean I was throwing as many snaps as I could throw because my snaps were just, they were sailing on me for some reason."
The anxiety, the fear began to mount. Kinchen wanted the opportunity, wanted to be an unseen hero. But he didn't want failure. He had watched only one season before as Trey Junkin, a 19-year NFL veteran who was signed out of retirement by the New York Giants for a Wild Card playoff game against the San Francisco 49ers, botched a pair of snaps, one of which came on a late field goal attempt that would have won New York the game.
Kinchen's heart went out to Junkin that day, but he also made sure to take a lesson away from watching the painful outcome - don't be tentative.
"It's like anything - you'd rather do it failing aggressively than failing timidly," said Kinchen.
It would turn out to be the most prescient observation of Kinchen's life.
So when Kinchen walked back onto the field at Reliant Stadium in Super Bowl XXXVIII with Vinatieri and the rest of the Patriots kicking unit, just nine seconds left on the clock and the game on the line, he was filled, slowly but surely with that fear, with that dread.
But through that fear and that dread shone Kinchen's faith. The night before, he had attended a chapel service and the pastor had spoken of the Book of Ecclesiastes, wherein Solomon notes that nothing matters, nothing in all of existence truly matters, other than service to God.
And when Kinchen finally settled over that ball, he was at peace.
***
Three stitches - that was Kinchen's immediate reward for helping the Pats to victory that day. While the rest of his Patriots teammates were whooping and hollering and enjoying the sweet taste of an NFL season which ended with the rarest of treats - ultimate victory - Kinchen was on an exam table, getting the wound in his hand sewn closed.
"There was no second thud," Kinchen said of his immediate reaction after the kick was away. "You always listen for the second thud because that means somebody blocked it."
No second thud, no flashes of yellow - the kick was up, and it was good. And Kinchen's relief was full, his primal scream both joyful and true, just as Vinatieri's kick had been, just as his snap had been, just as the Patriots' march through that NFL season.
"I had never processed out that we were going to win the game," Kinchen said. "I had never thought of that. I was just focused on my job. So until I saw that kick flying, and realized, started to process....I went from the depths of despair to the unbelievable heights of euphoria."
It was a strange ending to an odd, almost unbelievable story that revolves around one of the most mundane plays the game has to offer.
And at the center of it all was Kinchen, the man who only two months before had been teaching Bible study at an elementary school, the man who had torn through the flesh of his hand with a steak knife, had botched two snaps in the Super Bowl, but who, in the end, managed to fire off the perfect spiral when the Pats needed it, absolutely had to have it.
Kinchen's amazing story has been immortalized in a documentary, with a feature film in development titled "Before The Kick." Kinchen also wrote a book detailing his experience, titled "The Long Snapper LP: A Second Chance, a Super Bowl, a Lesson for Life."
