New England Patriots
Vinatieri won three Super Bowls with the Patriots and a fourth with the Colts. While he may have played more seasons in Indianapolis, he is an ultimate Patriot.
Former Patriots and Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Thursday night. Brynn Anderson
February 7, 2026 | 10:50 AM
4 minutes to read
SAN FRANCISCO — We don’t know if none of this happens without him — the 10 trips to the Super Bowl this century, the six championships secured, with a seventh pending Sunday night’s outcome.
Tom Brady probably becomes a superb quarterback even if Adam Vinatieri had shanked that 45-yard, tying field goal on that snow-globe Saturday night against the Raiders in February 2002.
Bill Belichick probably wins dozens, maybe even hundreds, of football games as a head coach. It could be that the Patriots would have still collected a Lombardi Trophy, or two, or more.
Maybe some of this does happen even if Vinatieri’s magical, impossibly clutch kick — not to mention his 23-yarder in overtime to give the Patriots a 16-13 victory in the divisional-round matchup — had not.
But this we know for sure: All of this began with Vinatieri 24 years ago, in Foxboro Stadium’s snowy final scene. Because of him, we can whimsically ponder how the “sliding doors” or “butterfly effect” might have altered what grew into two decades of Patriots dominance.
But we don’t ponder for long, because the reality — of snow angels that formative night and so many Super Bowls to come — is so much sweeter.
Vinatieri, as you surely heard and celebrated, was announced as a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s class of 2026 Thursday night.
The only small gripe is that he should have been part of last year’s class, his first time eligible, given that he is without a doubt the greatest kicker in NFL history.
In 24 seasons — his first 10 with the Patriots, then 14 more with the Colts — Vinatieri scored 2,673 points, the most in NFL history. He scored more than 100 points in a season a record 21 times, and made a record 44 consecutive field goals from 2015-16.
Yet as impressive as Vinatieri’s numbers are, his career is defined by moments. The bigger the stage, the better he was. The two kicks in the snow were the precursor to his winning 48-yard field goal as time expired three weeks later in the Patriots’ 20-17 upset of the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. Two seasons later, in a 32-29 victory over the Panthers in Super Bowl XXXVIII, Vinatieri buried a 41-yard field goal with four seconds left to secure the Patriots’ second championship in three seasons.
Just three times has a Super Bowl been decided by a field goal in the final seconds of regulation. Vinatieri — who kicked 18 game-winning field goals with less than a minute remaining in a game during his career — owns two of them.
It’s wild that Vinatieri booted two winning field goals in the Super Bowl and yet the tying kick in the snow — a line shot off his right foot that somehow cut through the falling snow, chilly air, and dark night — is undeniably his greatest achievement.
“That [tying] kick in the snow,” said Patriots coach Mike Vrabel, a teammate of Vinatieri’s for five seasons, “that’s probably the greatest feat — one of the greatest feats — I’ve seen on a football field.”
Vinatieri won three Super Bowls with the Patriots and a fourth with the Colts. While he may have played more seasons in Indianapolis (it was a savvy and career-extending move to sign with a dome team after the 2005 season), he is an ultimate Patriot. His defining moments happened in New England.
That includes making a certain memorable play that endeared him early on to his coaches and teammates. While the 2001 season is his tour de force of clutchness, Vinatieri actually was a rookie on a different Patriots Super Bowl team, back in 1996.
The rookie free agent struggled early, missing three field goals in a Week 2 loss to the Bills, then faltered again the next week against the Cardinals, missing an extra point and a field goal attempt.
Sports radio host Mike Francesa has claimed over the years that Patriots coach Bill Parcells — not exactly the patient sort — sent in Vinatieri for a 31-yard field goal late in the Cardinals game with something of an ultimatum: Make this kick, or start looking for a new job.
Vinatieri nailed it, then hit five field goals the next week against the Jaguars. But the moment he earned his bona fides with the Patriots came in a 12-6 slog of a loss to the Cowboys in Week 16.
In the first quarter Vinatieri — and this is no exaggeration — caught Cowboys kickoff returner Herschel Walker, an All-American sprinter at the University of Georgia, from behind. “You’re not a kicker,” Parcells told him. “You’re a football player.”
Vinatieri’s ascent as a rookie — not to mention his open-field tackling skills — validated Parcells’s difficult decision to keep him over 40-year-old veteran Matt Bahr in training camp. Parcells cut the aging but reliable Bahr because of his inability to kick off. “He’s the best kicker I’ve ever had,” said Parcells at the time of his decision. “There’s a lot of blood involved with Matt Bahr. There are very few players — but this is one of them — where your personal feelings are involved.”
He added, “We’ll see how Adam responds. I’ll be interested to see how things go for him from here on out.”
Our memories of Vinatieri’s assortment of heroic kicks have long told us that, yes, things went rather well for the greatest kicker there has ever been.
On Thursday night, the wonderful news that Vinatieri’s is Canton-bound delivered the ultimate confirmation.
Chad Finn
Chad Finn is a sports columnist for Boston.com. He has been voted Favorite Sports Writer in Boston in the annual Channel Media Market and Research Poll for the past four years. He also writes a weekly sports media column for the Globe and contributes to Globe Magazine.
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