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At 42, Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri, right, has changed the way he trains to maintain his body for the rigours of the NFL.Michael Conroy/The Associated Press

At 42, Indianapolis Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri is one game away from becoming only the fourth kicker in NFL history not to miss a single kick over a full season. He has converted all 47 extra points and all 28 field goals, including three of at least 50 yards.

He attributes his season of perfection simply to "trying to stay consistent" – the results certainly have been – and taking good care of his body, the oldest in the NFL.

"I don't get under a heavy squat rack or do a lot of heavy power cleaning any more," he said in a recent telephone interview. "It's hard on the joints, and when you get a little bit older, you can do other things that doesn't take quite as much strain on your body. I do a lot of core stuff to keep my core and hips loose and limber and strong. The workouts have evolved."

Vinatieri would join Gary Anderson (1998, Minnesota), Jeff Wilkins (2000, St. Louis) and Mike Vanderjagt (2003, Indianapolis) as the kickers not to miss over a full season. This season, NFL kickers have converted 62.5 per cent of all field goals beyond 50 yards. In Vinatieri's rookie season, in 1996, that success rate was roughly the league standard on kicks between 40 and 49 yards. Twenty years before that, in the 1970s, kicks between 30 and 39 yards were made that often.

In other words, kicking proficiency is steadily improving, with the baseline of making two of three kicks pushing back 10 yards every two decades.

"So you're saying 20 years from now, it'll be in the 60s?" Vinatieri said with a laugh.

NFL kickers are testing the limit of the human capacity to kick an oblong leather ball weighing less than a pound through a pair of yellow-painted poles 18 feet 6 inches wide and situated an increasing distance from where the ball is held upright.

Kickers have been successful on 83.9 per cent of all field goals this season, the third-highest rate on record, trailing only last year's 86.5 per cent and 2008's 84.5 per cent. The 11 seasons with the highest proficiency are the 11 most recent seasons.

Among the 12 teams in line for the playoffs, the results are even better. Now that Connor Barth has staked claim to the job in Denver, the 12 projected playoff kickers are converting 87.1 per cent of field goals and 63.4 per cent beyond 50 yards. Proximity to the goal posts is not necessary when deciding close postseason games.

Of the top 15 kickers, 12 are active. The most accurate kicker in league history is the Ravens' Justin Tucker (89.6 per cent). Tucker is one-tenth of 1 per cent ahead of the Cowboys' Dan Bailey, who until last Sunday was alone above 90 per cent for his career before a 52-yard miss put him in second place at 89.5 per cent.

Bailey says soccer was his segue into high-school kicking. His small school, Southwest Covenant in Yukon, Okla., sponsored only eight-man football and practised in an open field without goal posts. A handy family friend, Bill Martin, helped Bailey construct his own.

"We brought out some PVC pipe, dug some holes in the ground and crafted our own makeshift uprights," Bailey said, "and I just kicked on those."

The pivotal step in his development – as with most younger kickers – was attending a privately run camp run by Chris Sailer Kicking. Sailer, 37, a two-time All-America kicker and punter at UCLA, has become the United States' pre-eminent kicking instructor; he says 13 of the 32 starting NFL kickers attended his camps.

While there have been changes in technique – kickers tend to strike the ball to create more loft than before – the primary impetus for improvement has been more dynamic training and specialization, often at a younger age. The country's growing appreciation of and participation in soccer seems to have increased the basic aptitude of kicking talent.

When Sailer went to UCLA in 1995, he believes he was one of about a dozen kickers and punters to have a scholarship. Vinatieri had a partial grant to Division II South Dakota State in the early 1990s. Camps and showcases help college coaches recruit because wind does not appear on game film. Now, the majority of Division I programs offer scholarships for specialists, and all of them are full rides.

"These kids have worked harder from a younger age because there's no more of a reward at the end of the tunnel," Sailer said.

The NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision has seen the same trend as the NFL: The past nine college seasons are the only nine on record in which the national field-goal conversion rate has been above 70 per cent.

The average (29.7) and median (29) ages of NFL kickers meaning most were an impressionable nine or 10 years old during the 1994 World Cup. They were weaned on youth soccer; the older ones played at least through high school while some of the younger set stopped by junior year to specialize on kicking. Most college soccer scholarships are only partial grants.

The position has attracted a higher calibre of athlete, too. The Patriots' Stephen Gostkowski was also a pitcher on Memphis's baseball team; the Jets' Nick Folk received more soccer scholarship offers than football; Bailey was an individual state golf champion; and the Raiders' Sebastian Janikowski was a member of the Polish national youth soccer team.

Year-round training has helped kickers improve strength, and sophisticated in-season routines have helped them maintain it. Bailey, for instance, said he focuses on muscle-isolation lifts that emphasize explosive movements, as well as box jumps and plyometrics. The kickers believe such training has helped improve their precision as well as their endurance. Gostkowski ranks first in career 50-yard attempts, having made 13 of 17 (76.5 per cent) from that range.

"They're not having to overkick," said Folk, who is 19 of 33 (57.6 per cent) from beyond 50 yards. He added, "To make a 40-yard field goal before, it'd be like taking a 9-iron out and putting it through. When you're tired, you have to take out the driver, so it's a little bit different. Now guys are training harder and they can keep the 9-iron out a lot longer."

Many stadiums also have more consistent and durable kicking surfaces.

"I think the installation of FieldTurf has just made the percentages go up through the roof," Gostkowski said. "You look at some old film and some of these fields – and I had some experience my rookie year playing on just terrible grass – and it just makes the job a lot harder."

Also valuable to kickers has been a concurrent increase in scholarships for the long snappers. Sailer's kicking camp has a companion run by former UCLA long snapper Chris Rubio, and colleges are offering more scholarships to players at that position as well.

"People don't understand that the snapper and the holder make such a big difference in how many kicks you can make on a consistent basis if you know the ball is going to be in the same place at the same time with the same amount of lean and the laces in the right spot," Gostkowski said.

Folk raved about the precision of his long snapper, Tanner Purdum, who monitors the rotations and velocity of his snaps. Likening the ball to a clock face, Folk said the ideal for his holder to receive the ball with his laces on top, in the 12 o'clock position, so that he can set the ball straight down without adjustment.

"Anywhere, really, from 10 to 2 is pretty good," Folk said, "because it's an easy spin for the holder to do, but [Purdum] gets mad if it's not right at 12 every time."

Football, it has been said, is a game of inches: Snaps are that precise while kicks are growing more accurate by yards each year.

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