The following is a bonus episode of Locked On Presents through the Uprites,

a special podcast series about what it takes to make it as an elite college and NFL kicker,

reported by Cole Weinstein and featuring interviews with Lou Groza Award winners

and decade-plus NFL veterans.

Locked on Presents Through the Uprites is available now wherever you listen to podcasts.

Most of a kicker's career is spent on the sideline.

Like a slugger in baseball waiting for his at-bat.

There's a lot of downtime between kicks,

a lot of time to psych yourself out. And after all that, there's no guarantee you even get a chance to attempt a kick. If you let it, the sideline can be an endless purgatory of dark thoughts and

doubt, especially after a bad miss that fills the stadium

with booze.

That's why 23-year NFL kicking veteran John Carney approached his time on the sideline

with a singular consistent strategy.

I call sideline behavior, and it's certainly is, it varies from Kira to Kigger

to Kut. It really is a focus on your next

kick and not getting too emotionally involved in the game.

That's the focus of this chapter, the sideline, where a kicker spends the majority of his career

and the behavior he has to display in order to overcome all of that downtime.

In a game is violent as football where top athletes fight tooth and nail for mere inches in an attempt to make the other physically submit,

how is it possible that winners and losers, championships, and dynasties,

can be determined by a kicker? It doesn't add up, and yet it's an

essential element to the game I love. I've spent the past few years fascinated by these athletes

...