Ezra Shaw/Getty Images, left, and Matt Slocum/Associated Press
Kyle Williams, left, of the 49ers and Billy Cundiff of the Ravens played unfortunate roles in their teams' losses in the conference title games.
By BEN SHPIGEL
Published: January 23, 2012
Article from The New York Times
The text message lit up Rob Ash’s cellphone Monday morning. It read: “Coach, I’m O.K. I’m a fighter.” It came from Billy Cundiff, whom Ash knows as the clutch, confident kicker who grabbed the job at Drake University as a true freshman and never let go.
“Billy was the guy who always hoped the game would come down to him,” Ash said.
When it did, in the final seconds of Sunday’s A.F.C. championship game, Cundiff hooked a 32-yard field-goal attempt to deny Baltimore a chance at overtime and allow New England to escape with a 23-20 victory.
With that miss, Cundiff secured entry into an infamous and exclusive club that gained another member, Kyle Williams, whose muffed punt and lost fumble in overtime cost San Francisco against the Giants only hours later.
Cundiff, 31, and Williams, 23, awoke Sunday morning believing they would help lead their teams to the Super Bowl. They went to sleep, presumably, on Sunday night as villains, having suffered the unfortunate fate of committing miscues at critical moments in big games. They joined a list of players, including Bill Buckner, Scott Norwood and Chris Webber, as symbols of futility, condemned to blooper-reel eternity.
“There’s going to be some fans that will let that define your career,” said Mitch Williams, who should know. As a member of the Philadelphia Phillies, he gave up the three-run homer to Joe Carter that clinched the Toronto Blue Jays’ World Series title in 1993. “But as a player, there’s no way that you can let one play out of the thousands of plays that you’re going to make in your career define you.”
Williams — no relation to Kyle, whose link to baseball is his father, Ken, the general manager of the Chicago White Sox — watched most of both football games Sunday. He especially empathized with Cundiff, whose job he likened to that of a closer in baseball, saying: “If he makes it, he’s supposed to. The only thing that could happen is bad.”
Mitch Williams, now an analyst for MLB Network, lives down the street in New Jersey from San Francisco kicker David Akers, who set the N.F.L. record for field goals made this season, a year after his two misses proved the difference in Philadelphia’s playoff loss to Green Bay. Cundiff evoked Akers while speaking to reporters Monday, vowing he would look inward — to family and faith — for guidance and support.
“There is a situation where he could have rolled over and just kind of called it quits on a career, or he could have responded the way that he did, and that’s something that I am looking to do,” Cundiff said, adding: “There are a lot of people that I think, at first, thought they were going to talk me off the ledge. I think to have that mentality toward me, they obviously don’t understand.”
A 10-year veteran, Cundiff had converted 12 of his 13 previous postseason field-goal attempts. That experience, as well as his playing a position that necessitates a short memory, is likely to help him rebound, however disappointed — “absolutely devastated,” said Ash, who coached him at Drake before moving on to Montana State — Cundiff is now.
Kyle Williams, a second-year wide receiver, has received an outpouring of encouragement on Twitter, from 49ers fans, teammates and compassionate souls. But he has also received death threats and a considerable amount of expletive-laced messages, including a string from a user who told Williams, “hope you find a nice long rope and something sturdy to hang urself with” and asked San Francisco Coach Jim Harbaugh to “please give @KyleWilliams_10 the game ball. And make sure it explodes when he gets in his car.”
Asked Monday if he had paid attention to the messages on Twitter, Williams said he had stayed away because he cared only what his family, friends and teammates thought. Again he accepted responsibility, as he did Sunday.
“It’s one of those things you have to take accountability for,” said Williams, who later broke his cybersilence with appreciative messages to the former N.F.L. stars Deion Sanders and Kurt Warner. “Everybody is responsible for what they do on the field. It’s something that I was responsible for and I made a mistake, and it’s time to own up to it and move forward.”
Williams’s teammates seemed to appreciate his maturity. Frank Gore said he would back him up anytime, and Akers said he spoke with Williams alone, telling him about his playoff mishaps last season.
“There’s games where I’ve been the so-called hero and the so-called goat,” Akers said. “It probably lies somewhere in between. That’s the reality of all we do.”
Watching Cundiff line up for the kick Sunday, Ash was certain he would drill it. When it sailed wide left, Ash said he felt sick. The feeling had passed by Monday morning, when he fired off a text message. He told Cundiff that he still believed in him. And that he always will.
A version of this article appeared in print on January 24, 2012, on page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: It’s Good, and Not So Good: A 49er and a Raven Cope With Mistakes That Time Won’t Erase.
Article from The New York Times