Seemingly meaningless Week 17 games between two mediocre teams do mean something in Vegas, for draft position and, most notably for Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri, for player bonuses. Vinatieri has a clause in his contract that awards him a $500,000 bonus if he makes 90 percent of his field goals on the season.
So what happened against the Jaguars? He promptly missed his first kick of the day, a 48-yard attempt in the second quarter and therefore missed out on a chance to get the bonus.
After missing a 48-yd FG, Adam Vinatieri may have cost himself $500,000 in bonus money 👀. pic.twitter.com/DTLIo4C2ei
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) January 1, 2017
https://twitter.com/The_Analyst/status/815638076005449728
With that miss from Adam Vinatieri, he missed out on a $500k bonus. Happy New Year pic.twitter.com/pU2TI1DwKf
— Will McNabb (@willmcnabb0123) January 1, 2017
If Vinatieri had made that kick, he would have triggered the bonus, assuming he didn’t miss one later. With that miss, as one of the tweets above mentioned, he’d have needed to hit 11 field goals in the rest of the game in order to reach the bonus threshold. He ended up hitting one, ending the season 27-of-31, for 87 percent.
You think there’s pressure on a kicker to hit a clutch field goal to win a game, which Vinatieri has done plenty often in his career? That’s nothing compared to pressure to hit those contract bonuses, which the old stalwart couldn’t do.
Adam’s done pretty well for himself in his career, but wouldn’t we all be a bit miffed if something like that happened at our jobs and we just barely missed a huge bonus?
