By Mike Wilkening
Jan. 16, 2008

Titans PK Rob Bironas

There is the conventional way of getting to 38 points — five touchdowns, five extra points and one field goal.

And then there is the Rob Bironas way.

Bironas’ NFL-record eight field goals at Houston on Oct. 21, coupled with two touchdowns and two Bironas extra points, accounted for the scoring in the Titans’ 38-36 win. Bironas scored the first points of the game (a 52-yard field goal 150 seconds into the game) and the last (a 29-yard field goal as time expired). In between, he converted from 25, 21, 30, 28, 43 and 29 yards.

It was the signature performance of a memorable season for Bironas, the recipient of the 2007 Golden Toe Trophy, presented by the editors of Pro Football Weekly to the NFL’s most outstanding punter or placekicker. Bironas’ strongest competitor for the award, San Francisco’s Andy Lee, had one of the finest seasons ever by a punter, averaging an incredible 41.0 net yards per attempt despite punting more times (105) than anyone else in the league.

Bironas was also quite busy. He led the NFL in field goals (35) and tied for the league lead in field-goal attempts (39). Only three NFL kickers hit a higher percentage of their attempts. And no kicker among the 12 playoff teams scored a higher percentage of his team’s points. Bironas made two or more field goals in 11-of-16 games and drilled 2-of-3 attempts in Tennessee’s 17-6 wild-card loss at San Diego.

Only two kickers — Green Bay’s Mason Crosby and New England’s Steven Gostkowski — scored more than Bironas’ 133 points. However, Crosby and Gostkowski played for two of the NFL’s highest-scoring teams, a point driven home by their number of extra-point attempts. Gostkowski attempted and converted 74 — 74! — such attempts; Crosby, the talented rookie from Colorado, knocked home 48-of-48 extra-point tries. Bironas, meanwhile, made all of his 28 extra-point attempts. He finished with four fewer points than Gostkowski and eight fewer than Crosby.

Were it not for Bironas, the Titans very well may have missed earning the last playoff berth in the rugged AFC. Tennessee clinched that final spot with a 16-10, grind-it-out win at rival Indianapolis on Dec. 30. The Colts rested many starters, including QB Peyton Manning, for much of the game. But the Titans could not put Indianapolis away, and the game was tied until midway through the fourth quarter.

Then, Bironas, as he had done so often this season, bailed out the Titans’ offense. Bironas hit a 54-yard field goal with 7:33 left to put the Titans up to stay and added a 33-yarder with 2:56 left for the final margin of victory.

Bironas said he noticed how loud the RCA Dome can be at times, even remarking about it to a teammate. But he has become adept at blocking distraction out when he lines up to kick. The secret? Repetition.

“The noise isn’t there, the emotion isn’t there,” Bironas said of his approach. “You’re just attempting a kick.”

Bironas, who kicked collegiately at Auburn and Georgia Southern from 1996-2000, spent parts of his first two years out of school working in sales and marketing for Bironas Inc., his father’s building automation company. All the while, though, Bironas kept in kicking shape.

Larry Bironas noticed his son’s wandering eye.

“This is not what you want to do,” Rob Bironas recalled his father telling him. “This is what you’d like to do. Get out there and play football.”

Bironas made his first appearance in an NFL camp in 2002 with Green Bay. Bironas thought he had a shot to make the roster as a kickoff specialist, but he didn’t play in the preseason and was cut. The next year, he signed with the Buccaneers, the defending Super Bowl champions, who were set at kicker with Martin Gramatica. Bironas played in two preseason games and was cut once again.

In 2004, he landed with the Steelers. Pittsburgh’s kicker, Jeff Reed, had struggled in 2003 and was coming off a hip injury. Bironas played in every preseason game, including the entire season finale, but he was released in the last wave of cuts.

“There’s not room on many teams for two kickers,” Bironas said.

When he wasn’t trying to make an NFL roster, he was kicking in pro football’s minor leagues. In 2003, he kicked for the Charleston Swamp Foxes of Arena Football League 2. He made $200 a week with the Swamp Foxes, supplementing his income by working as a waiter at a seafood restaurant. The following year, he signed with the Arena Football League’s Carolina Cobras. Again he had a side job, this time in the loss-prevention department of a Best Buy in Charlotte, where he kept an eye out for customers trying to sneak items out of the store.

Bironas’ career took off in 2005. After a season with the Arena League’s New York Dragons, Bironas signed with the Titans, who had released Joe Nedney in February of that year. Bironas’ leg strength intrigued Titans special-teams coach Alan Lowry, and it helped that ex-Packers special-teams coach Frank Novak and then-Steelers special-teams coach Kevin Spencer vouched for Bironas’ potential.

Bironas fended off competitors Ola Kimrin and Jay Taylor to win the Titans’ kicking job. He hasn’t relinquished it, though the Titans did bring undrafted rookie John Vaughn to challenge him in the preseason.

Judging from the Titans’ first four games of the season, it would have been hard to tell Bironas was on his way to a special season. Bironas made 7-of-9 field goals in that span, a conversion rate close to his career percentage of .789 entering the ’07 campaign.

But after missing his last field-goal attempt Oct. 7 at Atlanta, Bironas didn’t miss again until the first week of December, a seven-week, 19-FG streak of perfection.

Eight of those field goals came at Houston, the defining moment of his career.

“And the amazing thing is that we almost had the chance to kick 10,” Lowry said, noting that the Titans lost a fumble deep in Houston territory on a first-quarter drive and had another promising drive stall just outside of Bironas’ range in the fourth quarter.

Bironas had an inkling he was in range of the franchise record for field goals in a game — indeed, he tied it as time expired in the first half and broke it with field goal No. 6 a little more than four minutes into the fourth quarter — but, as he put it, “I tried to remove myself from that.”

That focus has served Bironas well. Such is his tunnel vision that Bironas says he doesn’t “remember my kicks until I see them again on playback on the DVDs when we get home.”

Lowry, who just finished his ninth season as the Titans’ special-teams coach, has watched Bironas become remarkably consistent in his approach.

“I think that he’s got his technique, for the most part, the same, time after time after time after time,” Lowry said. “It’s like a golf swing.”

Soon Bironas, who turns 30 on Jan. 29, will be off to the Pro Bowl for the first time in his career, the coda to his special season.

“It’s absolutely unbelievable,” Bironas said of his campaign. “That dream you had as a kid, coming true.” 

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