Kickers played hero for the day on Sunday, as three NFL games were decided by late field goals.
Tampa Bay's Matt Bryant kicked the third-longest field goal in league history, a 62-yarder as time expired, in the Buccaneers' improbable 23-21 win over Philadelphia.
Kansas City's Lawrence Tynes booted a career-best 53-yard field goal with six seconds remaining to lift the Chiefs over San Diego.
And 46-year-old Morten Andersen recovered from a missed field goal near the end of regulation to convert a game-winning 32-yarder in overtime, sealing Atlanta's 41-38 victory over defending-champion Pittsburgh.
All three kickers received game balls for their heroic efforts, but even game-winners can't change an undeniable truth - kicking is the worst job in sports.
Sure, a kicker may have a Sunday in the sun once in a blue moon, but a player who wears small pads, doesn't use his hands and isn't even respected by his own teammates doesn't exactly spell out "superstar."
When's the last time you saw a Jason Elam jersey, anyway?
The highs of kicking are never as high as the lows are low.
Just ask former Buffalo Bills kicker Scott Norwood, remembered only for missing the potential game-winner in the Bills' 20-19 loss to the Giants in Super Bowl XXV.
Norwood received numerous death threats following the wide-right miss, was unsigned and essentially banished from professional football. He was even the subject of the 1998 film "Buffalo 66," in which director/star Vincent Gallo's character vows to murder Norwood for the miss.
The maniacal Ray Finkle from 1994's "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective," a fictional kicker who loses his mind after blowing the big game for the Miami Dolphins, isn't actually that far off.
Many times the pressure of big-game kicking leaves only a shell of a man in small pads and one soccer cleat.
Case in point: Oakland Raiders kicker Cole Ford missed a potential game-winner versus. Tampa Bay in 1996, ruining the Raiders' playoff chances.
Subsequently, Cole made only 13-of-22 attempts the following season, then reportedly fled to Mexico, only to resurface seven years later after being arrested for shooting at Siegfried and Roy's house.
According to a psychiatric report, the grizzled and bewildered Cole wanted to "warn the world" of the threat the entertainers' magic posed, and he was sent away to a mental health facility.
Oh, the life of a kicker.
Scouting kickers must be a lot like shopping for toilet paper - you sure as hell need one, but what do you even look for?
Several NFL teams have found out the hard way that investing too much in a kicker can be a costly, and embarrassing, mistake.
When the New York Jets elected to take Ohio State kicker Mike Nugent with the 15th pick in the second round of the 2005 NFL Draft, pundits and fans scratched their heads collectively.
Now Jets management can only hang their heads, as "The Nuge" made only 22 of 28 field-goal tries to finish 19th in the league in field-goal accuracy his rookie year. Nugent has dropped to 25th in accuracy this season.
But the worst draft-day kicker debacle, and arguably the worst draft pick ever, is the Oakland Raiders' selection of kicker Sebastian Janikowski. Drafted 17th overall, the 6-foot-2-inch, 250-pound Polish waste of space has a dismal 78.8 percent field-goal accuracy in his career. He was only 20 of 30 last season, dead last in the league in accuracy.
Janikowski has also been fined by the Raiders numerous times over his six-year career for being overweight, proving once and for all that when it comes to kickers, size definitely does not matter.
The biggest deterrent for drafting kickers high, or even at all, is that many of the league's best follow nontraditional career paths.
Bryant, who kicked the 62-yard game-winner for Tampa Bay, worked for four years at a pawn shop following college before signing with the Bucs.
Kansas City's Tynes went undrafted out of Troy.
Even the Colts' Adam Vinatieri, who kicked two Super Bowl-winning field goals for the Patriots and is 10-for-10 in field-goal tries this season, went undrafted out of South Dakota State.
In fact, five out of the top 10 kickers in field-goal percentage this season went undrafted.
But the award for most unorthodox path to kicking undoubtedly goes to Boston College walk-on Steve Aponavicius, a former soccer player who was discovered by an assistant coach while kicking a borrowed ball at B.C.'s practice field.
Earlier this season, "Sid Vicious," as his teammates have tagged him, kicked two field goals and two extra points in the Eagles' 22-3 win over then-No. 22 Virginia Tech in his first organized football game, ever.
Unfortunately, for every Vinatieri or Aponavicius, there's a thousand Ray Finkles waiting in the wings.
Reach the reporter at Nathaniel.Lipka@asu.edu.
