Ravens' Cundiff moves forward
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For Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff, the support of his teammates and the lessons learned from his Midwestern upbringing have helped keep the biggest miss of his career in perspective.
The 31-year-old Cundiff returned to his home state of Iowa to accept an alumni award from Drake University in Des Moines, three weeks after he shanked a 32-yard field-goal attempt with 11 seconds left in the AFC championship game that sent the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl.
Cundiff said his Ravens teammates had been even more supportive than he imagined.
"It's been impressive. I expected a lot more backlash," Cundiff said. "I had a lot of guys that kept telling me, 'Look, I've made mistakes.' Obviously, everyone sees my mistakes. That's just the way it goes."
Cundiff called the miss a "tough pill to swallow." But it certainly wasn't the first setback for an Iowa kid who blossomed from a wannabe quarterback at a non-scholarship Division I-AA school to an All-Pro kicker.
Cundiff was a three-time all-state pick as a quarterback at Harlan High, a small-school football powerhouse in western Iowa, and kicked out of necessity. Cundiff had hoped to play quarterback at Drake, but he quickly discovered his future in football was as a kicker.
He said the relative anonymity of kicking for the Bulldogs -- who rarely draw more than a few thousand fans a game -- allowed him to get all his mistakes out of his system away from the spotlight.
By the time Cundiff left Drake, he held school records with 284 points and 49 career field goals. "I like to tell people that my parents groomed me to be a basketball player, but God made me a kicker."
Cundiff bounced around the NFL, spending four seasons with Dallas and one with New Orleans before finding himself out of the game in 2007.
But Cleveland lured him back to the game in 2009, and he finally found a permanent home when Baltimore signed him in November 2009 after the Browns waived him.
First Published February 13, 2012 12:00 am
