Cundiff says Ravens backed him right after shank
ByDES MOINES, Iowa — For Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff, the help of his teammates and the lessons discovered from his Midwestern upbringing have assisted preserve the greatest miss of his career in standpoint.
The 31-12 months-outdated Cundiff returned to his property state of Iowa on Sunday to acknowledge an alumni award from Drake University in Des Moines, 3 weeks soon after he shanked a 32-lawn industry aim try with eleven seconds left in the AFC Championship Game that sent the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl.
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They realized if I had that same situation to play over again, I’d probably make it 99 occasions out of 100.
” — Ravens K Billy Cundiff
on Ravens backing him soon after missed FG
Cundiff explained his Ravens teammates had been even a lot more supportive than he imagined.
“It’s been impressive. I predicted a lot a lot more backlash,” Cundiff explained. “I had a lot of guys that kept telling me, ‘Look, I’ve manufactured mistakes.’ Certainly, absolutely everyone sees my mistakes. Which is just the way it goes.”
Cundiff called the miss a “difficult pill to swallow.” But it undoubtedly wasn’t the 1st setback for an Iowa child who blossomed from a wannabe quarterback at a non-scholarship FCS university to an All-Professional kicker.
Cundiff was a 3-time all-state pick as a quarterback at Harlan High, a tiny-university football powerhouse in western Iowa, and kicked out of requirement. Cundiff had hoped to play quarterback at Drake, but he swiftly found out his future in football was as a kicker.
Cundiff was also a position guard for the basketball group who played sparingly, although he give up before his senior year to focus on football. He explained the relative anonymity of kicking for the Bulldogs — who hardly ever draw a lot more than a few thousand followers a video game — allowed him to get all his mistakes out of his system away from the spotlight.
By the time Cundiff left Drake, he held university data with 284 details and 49 career industry objectives.
“I like to explain to individuals that my parents groomed me to be a basketball player, but God manufactured me a kicker,” Cundiff explained.
Cundiff bounced all around the NFL, shelling out 4 seasons with Dallas and one with New Orleans before discovering himself out of the video game in 2007.
Cundiff, who received his MBA from Arizona State, invested the up coming two a long time working for a venture funds organization. But Cleveland lured him again to the video game in 2009, and he ultimately identified a long term property when Baltimore signed him in November 2009 soon after the Browns waived him.
Following staying lower by NFL teams nine occasions, Cundiff earned All-Professional honors in 2010 and doesn’t have to search over his shoulder regardless of the greatest miss in group history.
For that, Cundiff is grateful.
“They realized if I had that same situation to play over again, I’d probably make it 99 occasions out of 100,” he explained. “It was a really strange situation. The group recognized the context of it all. So they realized really going forward that they don’t have to worry about me, due to the fact they know what I’ve been via.”
Cundiff 50 percent-jokingly explained that expectations at his high university ended up so high that dropping the state title video game was deemed by some to be a disappointing year. But Cundiff also discovered a wonderful deal about standpoint while at Harlan.
Cundiff explained his coach at Harlan hardly ever talked about successful or dropping. He rather informed his gamers to merely set forth their finest effort, a lesson Cundiff leans on to this day.
“We just talked about taking part in the finest we could and, as he’d say, let the chips fall exactly where they might. And I think that is the mindset I’ve taken when I received into the NFL. I know I’m really going to fall short, and I know I’m really going to have some accomplishment. I’m really going to set my finest effort out there, and sometimes it truly is not really going to be great ample, and sometimes it truly is really going to be a lot more than ample,” Cundiff explained. “But at the conclude of the day, can I search myself in the mirror and say I did the finest I could? If that is the situation, then I know I can’t really do any a lot more than that.”
Copyright 2012 by The Connected Press
