‘Kicking is like a love-hate relationship’ for Stephen Gostkowski
On Thursday night against the Jacksonville Jaguars, Stephen Gostkowski made a 43-yard field goal and missed a 56-yard try in New England’s first preseason game of the season. Although he’s coming off one of his more troublesome seasons in recent years, Gostkowski said he isn’t going to let his 84.4 percent field goal percentage from 2016 keep him down.
The kicker—who averaged a 90 percent field goal percentage in the three seasons prior—told NESN’s Zach Cox that he learns “so much from his bad years, a lot than [he does] from his good years.”
Speaking to Cox after one of the team’s training camp practices, Gostkowski elaborated on his approach to the game:
I can only remember a couple of the kicks I have made. But I remember almost every one that I’ve missed. Kicking is like a love-hate relationship. You lose weeks of sleep over a bad game. And a bad game can be one missed kick. So the ones you make, you just try to build on the confidence with it, and the ones you miss, you just try to get it out of your head as quick as possible and try to make the next one.
Missed extra points also plagued the 33-year-old last season, tarnishing his streak of nine-straight seasons with a 100 percent success rate. Gostkowski missed three point-after attempts, including one in Super Bowl LI. He told Cox:
It really is a challenge, because you become a perfectionist. You expect perfection, and it’s kind of tough when you don’t live up to those expectations. But that’s the way you show mental toughness by getting back up, going out there, and trying to do it right the next time. No one makes every single kick. You’ve just got to limit the runs of missing a ton.
The kicker emphasized, however, that he’s not going to let neither failure nor success get to his head:
I just always try not to get too high when I’m doing well and not get too low when I’m doing bad. That can come off as looking like I’m nonchalant or looking like I don’t really care, but I really do care.
I’m just not going to, every time I screw up, throw a temper tantrum. I’m just going to try to stay cool, calm, and collected. Because if I selfishly go out there and miss one kick and pout and whine and cry, and go out there and miss two more in that same game, then I’m doing my team more of a disservice than just sucking it up and trying to go out there and do it right the next time.
It’s a tough gig when it’s going tough, and it can be pretty easy when you’re getting on a roll. So I just try to make sure I get on a roll as much as I can.
