Morten Andersen’s maniacal approach to the craft of kicking a football helped to land him a coveted spot among the greats in Canton, Ohio.
Andersen, whose game-winning field goal helped to the send the Falcons to their first Super Bowl appearance in 1999, is set to be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame at 6 p.m. Saturday.
He’s ready for his gold jacket.
For the 25 seasons and 382 games that Andersen kicked in the NFL, he carried around spiral notebooks and laminated cards. He wrote down all of the details of each of his many kicks, and he became the NFL’s all-time leading scorer with 2,544 points.
“Performance feedback is important,” Andersen said. “I think understanding where you are as an athlete is important. Creating a baseline so that you know in what direction you are moving. You are either getting better or you’re getting worse. There is no status quo in the high-performance business.”
Andersen described himself as being detailed, analytical and very mechanical with his approach to kicking.
“It was important for me to write things down and see it on paper,” Andersen said. “It became very powerful for me.”
Anderson used video analysis along with daily logs to keep his balls sailing through the uprights well into his 40s and through two stints with the Falcons.
“Charting kicks, practice and game kicks was important,” Andersen said. “There were many, many moving parts to my preparation. I think one of the reasons that I had a fair amount of success in some perceived high-pressure situations is because I was well-prepared. I had defined my work bench. I knew exactly what to do. I had documentation to prove that I was pretty good at it.”
No doubt about it.
The Saints selected him in the fourth round of the 1982 draft. He kicked for the Saints through the 1994 season and is still bitter about his release. The Falcons scooped him right up.
“Change is sometimes very healthy for a player,” Andersen said. “My separation from the Saints to the Falcons was very quick and abrupt and distasteful in many ways. I do think that I moved on and focused with renewed vigor and passion for the game. I continued to play at a very high level.”
Andersen contends he was released for salary-cap reasons.
He played with Saints (1982-1994), the Falcons (1995-2000, 2006-07), New York Giants (2001), Kansas City (2002-03) and Minnesota (2004).
Andersen will be remembered by Falcons fans for kicking the field goal that sent the Falcons to their first Super Bowl. On Jan. 17, 1999, Andersen made a 38-yard field goal to give the Falcons a 30-27 overtime victory over heavily favored Minnesota in the NFC Championship game.
“It sure was fun to watch that ball hit the net right between the pipes and kind of hear the silence in the Metrodome,” Andersen said. “It was pretty cool.”
Andersen, a native of Denmark, discovered football while living in Indianapolis as a foreign exchange student. He was supposed to be in the United States for 10 months, but when his kicking exploits were discovered, he became an instant high school hero.
“I wanted to play soccer,” Andersen said. “I was a gymnast and a handball player. ... I didn’t know anything about the game. The shape of the ball was different to me. It was so foreign to me, and I spoke very little English at the time.
“It became a vehicle, a vessel if you will, for me to integrate real quickly into the American high school way of life. I had 80 new friends, just like that, when they saw the ball fly vertical and high through the uprights. I was the new kicker and that happened overnight, literally.”
He played at Michigan State before moving on to the NFL.
Andersen holds the league record for field goals made (565) and most games played (382).
Only three kickers in league history have been inducted into the hall: George Blanda, Lou Groza and Jan Stenerud. Stenerud, the last kicker selected, was sent to Canton in 1991.
Andersen, a six-time Pro Bowler while playing with the Saints, made the second longest field goal in NFL history (60 yards) in 1991.
Andersen made the NFL’s 1980 and 1990 All-Decade teams. He converted 565 of 709 field-goal attempts (79.7 percent), both of which are records for kicks made and attempted. He is the career scoring leader for the Saints and the Falcons.
Andersen was credited with turning the field goal into a major offensive weapon. His range allowed his coaches to basically extend their scoring range. Former NFL coach Bill Parcells considered the 40-yard line the red zone when playing against Andersen’s teams.
Andersen was elected to the Hall of Fame in his fifth year of eligibility. Ray Guy became the first punter enshrined in 2014.
Andersen hopes that his enshrinement will open the door for other special teamers, such as Steve Tasker, Bill Bates, Adam Vinatieri, Gary Anderson and Shane Lechler, in the future.
“I think it becomes legitimized as a position, not that it needed to be, but there has been a stigma that not being an every-down player was somehow a handicap when it came to consideration for the Hall,” Andersen said. “I think we need to move the conversation forward.”
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